


forever young

by tado



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU (negligible), Abusive Relationships (confined with few chapters with warnings), Aftermath of Torture, Betrayal, F/F, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Marauders, Occasional Mathematics, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2018-07-22
Packaged: 2018-11-29 03:35:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 11
Words: 43,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11432328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tado/pseuds/tado
Summary: // February, 1979Two large men were firmly holding her shoulders, absolutely uninterested whether or how much pain they were inflicting on her broken, weakened at the moment body. The electric-blue eye, spinning at an unbelievable speed in excitement, seemed to access her in the entirety, scanning her very core.  As they pushed her into the chair in the small, carefully illuminated room, she could get a glimpse of the wooden leg, replacing the one she has cut in a battle with a spell she was very proud of to master. An action she had been regretting, and yet she could not help but to smile upon a reminder of her skill and strength."Nice to meet you again", said Alastor Moody unexpectedly calmly, taking a step back. "Lestrange".On the other side of the wall, in the narrow obscure corridor James Potter hit his best friend as hard as he could, sealing his protesting body in between his shaking hands. His fingers digged into Sirius' shoulder, preventing him from breaking into the interrogation room and getting himself into a serious trouble."Lien," gasped Sirius, helpless and angry.ADDED CHAPTER IS #6; MINOR EDITS TO CHAPTERS 7-11 PENDING =)





	1. The Cave

**Author's Note:**

> few warnings:  
> ~ english is only my third language. please, point on all the mistakes & wrong word choice  
> ~ ecosia was my only ally in learning british swearings/expressions. da f*ck's ecosia? its a search engine. switch to it :3  
> ~ direct speech is in following format: <-SPEECH, - NARRATOR, - SPEECH.>. It comes from Russian, the language I am more used to writing in. At some point I shall switch to quotation marks, as in regular English. Please don't hate!

_1973, July_

In the pale blue sky, covered with beautiful, giant clouds, there was a wizard on a broomstick. Good old Cleansweep Five, with rough oak handle and a broom still burning with its original fire red. A pretty archaic device, purchased on his sixteenth birthday as it came out, was of great service for all the following twenty-three years. Well. Perhaps it was not as fast or secure as the new models, but the wizard felt certain attachment to it, treating it with enormous care and knowledgeability, as one would take care of a treasure, fragile and priceless. The mere thought of replacing good old Cleansweep Five felt wrong, as abandoning a venerable and trusted friend that has gotten him out of countless troubles.

The heavy rain that has not stopped since it started in the early afternoon, seemed to carefully frame the wizard and his broomstick without touching them, as if they were covered with a thin layer of invisible waterproof material. The wind, however, cold and fierce, hitting the wizard's face and playing with his long, black hair, was fully making up for all the other disadvantages he managed to escape with a water repelling charm. He had a deep sigh, fastened the top one of the rhombus-shaped, purple buttons of his black overcoat and watched the last rays of sun vanish behind the mountains. As the time was passing with no result, he was becoming worried and impatient.

\- Lien, - he screamed on the top of his voice, closing his eyes in order to focus all the attention on catching a reply.

The name of the wizard was Euan Charles Lestrange, and he has spent last five hours searching for his thirteen year old daughter. If he was to believe the note she generously left before running away, breathtaking chain of mountains right in front was the place she would have reached at this point of her journey. The plan seemed to have been to get to the village just a few miles away by the sunset, but the unaccounted weather conditions must have decelerated her advancement by just about a few miles.

\- Dad?

Euan thought he has heard someone saying that in an unsure, questioning intonation, echoing with an unimposing hope and fear. He opened his eyes and flew closer to the rocks. The monosyllabic word that may or may not have been actually uttered was the only intimation he got. He took out his wand from pocket and pointed it forward, hardly having swung it. An uneven, unstable light poured from the tip, illuminating the view as a huge candle would.

Lestrange took a deep breath as he identified a familiar, thick rope stretching across very narrow, practically non-existing path. Oddly enough, the wizard found himself rather confident that nothing incorrigible did or was going to happen with his daughter. Some ten or eleven hours of no matter how heavy rain were far from being sufficient to seriously endanger her wellbeing. After all, she grew up climbing up rocks with him, and has by now became more prowess at it. Still, Euan almost physically felt the need to see her, ensure that she was well.

He slided his wand to the south and saw Lien standing on a ledge only large enough to contain her feet, her knees bent, providing with a greater stability. She was nervously trampling the worn-out pair of jeans she had on, and Euan remotely recalled buying it at a muggle shop last summer that was big on her at the time. As he flew closer, Lien quietly nodded, acknowledging his presence, and, before he could get close enough to converse, showed him to her right. Euan nodded, blew loosely on the tip of his wand, making the light shine stronger and flew into the cave Lien was pointing at.

Despite the scarce dimensions of the cave and low ceiling, Euan jumped off his broomstick without any visible effort, like he would have done twenty-three years ago, as the best beater Slytherin have had in generations he then was. Carefully placing the good old Cleansweep Five just above the dirty ground, letting it float, the wizard raised his wand and mildly waved it. The light condensed into a sphere and disengaged with the tip, hitting the ceiling and illuminating the entire cave.

Close to the ledge, just a few inches away from the entrance, Euan saw his own camping backpack, stuffed to the fullest of its capacity. Lien's once dark brown, now dirty beyond any recognition right boot carefully pushed it further into the cave, opening up some space for herself to enter. Her almost disproportionately large palm lied on the wall, getting a firm grip of a rugged stone. She was pulling herself in slowly, with a serious, prudent confidence of a person that has mastered the skill of balancing on edge as a second nature.

Euan smiled with relief and pride, watching Lien to straighten up. The water was dropping from the light yellow pullover and her short hair. She appeared to be shaking, likely from the cold, but there certainly was a reason to be proud of her. She was only thirteen years old and has been successfully surviving completely on her own for full ten days, with no magic at all.

\- You didn't have to come, - she said. She did not seem particularly happy about having been found. - I would have been fine.

As Lien lacked the courage to look her father into the eyes, she lowered her sight to the ground and sat beside the backpack, on a hand's distance from the hem of Euan's overcoat, taking off her pullover, stalling the apologies she thought were expected.

The cave she found just a few minutes ago, and after about an hour's potentially useless and most certainly dangerous climbing up and down steep rocks, could be seen as a decent one. The air was rather humid and there was a puddle, leaking from another tiny ledge further south, but, considering that the closest alternative was to stand somewhere, holding from whatever she could find at the moment to hold to, hanging from the rope under a howling rain, fighting sleep and waiting for it to clear up, Lien did think she would have been fine.

Euan did not rush with a reply, allowing his daughter some time to guess whether he was angry with her or not. He summoned the pack of wet sticks tied to his backpack and bent over, piling them together. He shoot a sparkle of fire on them from his wand, and, watching the wet wood to blacken without producing any heat, highly doubted that his daughter would have been fine tonight.

\- Seco, - said Lestrange moving the wand smoothly above the wood pile, drying it. He didn't really need to pronounce the spell, especially for a simple charm like this. He just thought the established silence needed to be broken. 

With a similar, but somewhat more gracious and effortless confidence as that of Lien, Euan squatted and sat beside her, shooting another sparkle into the sticks, this time resulting in an actual mauve fire, shimmering in a colorful dance of blue and purple. He stretched his tensed legs across the dusty ground of the cave, and turned his sight to Lien, who was still looking down, as if contemplating her guilt. His hand longed to her shoulder, covered with the sticky wet fabric of gray shirt, but stopped midway.

\- There was not supposed to be any magic, - informed Lien.

\- Seems like it didn't work out, - simply observed Euan, sounding almost apologetic.

Lien silently nodded, not ready yet to admit that as the shadows were growing thicker and the rain more fierce, she was regretting not being indoors and hoping that Euan was searching for her. She was not intending to share the responsibility of her running away from the house with him, yet, here he was, with a clear determination to help, stripping her off the freedom to suffer the consequences.

Euan put his wand aside and carefully touched Lien's shoulder with his fingertip. She was freezing.

\- Lien, - he called, tightening his grip.

Lien turned to him, looking with an unsure, somewhat angry challenge, unapproving of all the convenient magic her father was throwing on her. Euan, concerned, was pulling out an enormous towel from his pocket, still firmly holding Lien’s shoulder, as if afraid that she might run away again. Watching Euan struggle with the giant piece of fabric, she could not help to smile.

\- Disrobe, - he said somewhat imperatively.

Lien bit on her lower lip. It was quite tempting to turn around and tell her father that he was not welcome in her cave. She coughed, feeling her ears to ring, preceding a possible fever or further complications, and had a sigh.

She quickly took off her shirt and bended over to untie shoelaces. Once bright red, now covered in dried mud, they were stuck together. As the dirt cracked, peeling off and the ties loosened, Lien impatiently forced the shoes off her feet. Euan, putting part of the towel over her back, reached for his wand just in time to catch the boot that would have otherwise fallen to the abyss.

\- Takk, - Lien murmured, watching the shoe float back to the cave.

The wet, hardened fabric of old, usually soft and comfortable jeans, manufactured in a small town near Liverpool, was hard to get unstuck from her skin. Euan automatically swung his wand in Lien's direction, and the stubborn piece of clothing smoothly jumped off her legs and landed next to the fire.

Lien coughed and yawned, cold and exhausted. Worried, Lestrange dropped his wand, easily lifted her from the ground and put on his lap, right on the towel, and wrapped her up in it, from head to toe. Only her face, regaining a healthier color, and her dirty pink socks were peeking out from under the towel. Euan's large, strong palms squeezed Lien's shoulders, hurting her just a little bit, and turned her around, so that he could see her face.

She yawned again, inhaling the humid air, drowning in the warm comfort of the material cover and the proximity of her father. Euan hugged her, pressing to his chest with all his might, now allowing himself to comprehend and feel how worried and winded he was for his daughter until this very moment.

Lien took another deep breath, swallowing the tears conditioned by the tension she had to live through in the house she chose to leave without permission, the fear she had experienced in the last few hours and the sincere joy she was feeling from reuniting with Euan after about six months of separation. She has been missing him very much, but could not liberate her hands from his thin, yet strong arms to hug him back.

\- What has happened? - inquired Euan quietly, whispering just above Lien’s ear.

She was not intending on giving her father an explanation of what has happened right now, when she was found so close to failing. The plan was to return in two weeks, triumphantly, with an interesting story to tell. A story interesting enough that Euan would let her go without suffering any serious consequences.

\- Mum saw me reading a muggle book, - she said, embarrassed to admit that she was caught. - The book Ted said I should read, - she went on, smiling for an instant. - How's Ted?

\- He's well, - replied Euan, also smiling with a bittersweet feeling upon remembering his amateur, unusually strong student he abandoned today in the afternoon. - Getting his PhD done.

Lien moved a bit, getting herself to a more comfortable position and trying to push the moment of the subject returning to what has happened. Euan enfeebled his hold of Lien, providing her with the freedom to move.

\- What did Jane do? - he asked.

His right hand, hurting from writing too much too often, slided off Lien’s shoulder, stroking her back. There were this rare occasions when deep inside Euan was outraged, hateful towards his wife and could not bring himself to refer to her as the mother in Lien’s presence. The current moment, heavy with the silence reflecting Lien’s unwillingness to give an answer, was one of those occasions.

\- She got mad, - she said finally, in a low voice.

Jehanne Madelaine Lestrange, a pureblood witch from Crabbe family, was a nervous lady and was getting mad more often than one would expect from a reasonable adult. There was nothing extraordinary about the most recent instance, and Lien, being used to it, continued her narration in the same low, even intonation.

\- Tore the book in half.

Euan did not remember how his hand lied across Lien, pressing her to his chest, needlessly protecting her from an experience she had already gone through. He could picture the imposing, thin figure of Jane, shouting at Lien in a genuine belief that there is no other way for her, as a good parent, to correct the fallacious nature of the girl, telling her to get lost or taking Lien to her room, and having trouble to breathe, as the anger would be washing all over her. 

\- I suppose she locked the door as well, - he unintentionally voiced after a short silence.

Euan felt Lien move slightly under his firm grip and yawn again. She didn't need to confirm the guess, as Jane locking her up in the luminous chamber of the northern most corner of the castle was rather a routine procedure.

\- The bloody rotters, - said Lien, swallowing the umbrage of her helplessness, embarrassment on wanting to tell Euan what had happened, seeking his help, - would come in…

\- Lien, - interrupted Euan coldly. He didn't tolerate swearing. 

Upon being interrupted, Lien thought that her father was not fair with her on this one. Rodolphus and Rabastan were bloody rotters, regardless of her stating so. She felt the resentment and sadness for herself evaporate, hardening her determination to deal with her problems on her own.

\- Rodolphus and Rabastan, - she started over, abiding, as not swearing aloud was one of very few things Euan was asking her to do, - would come in…

Lien paused, not willing to get into details. Euan could very well guessed himself what were his bloody annoying cousins coming to her room for.

\- By the third day I thought I had enough, - she concluded calmly. - I got out the window and climbed to your bedroom to gather the things I'd need and leave the note. Did you get the note?

\- I did, - said Euan, taking off his boots, somehow managing to do that with Lien still on his lap, and putting them next to the broom, carefully as not to damage either of his belongings.

Rushly folded piece of parchment, covered in what would appear to most of the people senseless strings of letters and numbers was to be found in his drawer, next to where he usually kept his backpack. Having developed some liking for muggle cryptography, Lien has used a very simple shift cipher to tell Euan about the rout she was planning to take and that she was going to be back by the twenty second of july, a few days after Euan was to be back from conference in Bonn. She could have had used a spell to encode the letter, if she was skilled enough with charms, but that would have been very vulnerable to being discovered and read by her way more experienced mother or uncles, whereas a simple piece of paper with no magical trace was safe and sound until Euan, for whom it was meant, saw it.

\- Well done, by the way, - said Lestrange, quoting the amateur and surprisingly strong student of his, that was currently working on PhD. Lien smiled.

Muggle Theodore Thompson had a dual degree in Security Engineering and Geology and, although his true academic passion lied in later, he liked to brag every now and then about various ciphers. Coincidentally, despite being twelve years her senior, he was pretty much the only friend Lien had, and has taught her some simple tricks that did not involve complex algebra. He would have been excited to learn that Lien has used his knowledge to communicate a secret and would have most certainly said “well done, by the way”, among many other comments.

It took Euan a solid hour to decrypt the message. He did not happen to absorb all the wisdom Ted was occasionally throwing at him in an unorganised manner and had a rather rudimentary understanding of modular arithmetics that lie in basis of shift codes, so, Lien's choice to leave a note was a bit of a headache in the end.

\- I thought I should leave you a note just in case, - answered Lien an unposed question.

She knew her absence wouldn't be of great importance to any of the people she left behind in the manor. She knew neither of them would be bothered enough to contact Euan and inform him about it. It was in fact curious and surprising that someone actually spared their precious time to do so.

\- Dad, - she went on quietly, rising a bit and looking on Euan, straight into his juniper green, almond-shaped eyes.

She sounded concerned, as she was realizing that her father being here meant he was not at the conference in Bonn he was looking so much forward to.

\- You must have missed Ted's presentation.

\- I did, - said Euan without much regret. A nice room in the hotel, paid for by his university, and a glass of scotch with his colleagues in the evening was all he had to compromise. - I didn't have much of a choice, really, - he smiled, - it was either listening him rumble about volcanic granites or making sure my brat did not get herself into trouble.

Lien fell on Euan, taking him out of balance, too, and finally liberating her hands from his weakened hold, hugged him herself. It was perhaps a bad thing, but she was very content that her father chose to come to her above supporting his PhD student on his first presentation in front of the most renowned experts in the field. She felt guilty on some level, for being the reason, but she had absolute confidence that no one was going to pull Euan out of his conference for her, and thus did not feel the responsibility to be hers.

Euan smiled widely and got above Lien in one quick move, covering both of them in the giant towel. Lien started to laugh, forgetting the fear she has gone through in last hours. Euan gently kissed her forehead, inhaling the strangely refreshing smell of rain and mud.

\- I got very worried, you know? - he asked, trying his best not to sound as if he was blaming Lien.

She stopped laughing, her hands loosening and sight turning to a side.

\- Sorry․

\- No, - cut Euan very seriously, lying beside Lien, - don't be.

His long, obsidian hair covered up Lien's face. She laughed again, looking to the sphere of light floating just below the ceiling through a dark, partitioned curtain. She had a beautiful, contagious laugh, and Euan laughed with her, too.

\- I want you never to be afraid to ask me for help, - he informed, - brat.

\- Brat, - echoed Lien with a pretentious anger and pushed Euan with her elbow, through a thick layer of fluffy towel, moving him by a fraction of an inch.

\- Brat, - confirmed Euan, smiling, in his turn grabbing her head and pressing to himself, provoking a loud, cheerful laughter. - How did your second semester go?

Lien closed her eyes, thinking how to start.

\- The second semester of the second year, - she said slowly, still thinking.

\- Ja, the one, - confirmed Euan, raising and bending over Lien, suspecting that something has gone wrong during the semester in question. 

Lestrange has hardly gotten the chance to talk to her since January. He was often busy putting together the conference happening at this very moment in Bonn and working for his uncle at their ancestral establishment producing apparating powder, as well as Lien did not like writing letters or talking with him through magical mediums. So, Euan did not have much of an idea how she has been doing. He looked at her rather intently, as she was mastering the courage to inform him.

\- I failed the Potions class, - she said finally. 

Euan bended closer, his hair touching Lien's nose. He has had lots of trouble passing Potions, too. There was a faint recollection of Lien mentioning something about it in the beginning of year, but he failed to pay attention to it at a time.

\- I made the cut for Herbology, - she continued, embarrassed for herself, trying to somehow restate the fact of almost having failed it, too.

Most of the Herbology classes were spend in the garden, looking after the plants that were assigned to her cousin, who had persuasive enough friends currently attending Hogwarts. However, she did not want to tell that excuse to Euan. Her inability to stand up for herself was a problem she considered to be hers only.

\- I could… - Euan stopped for a second, reconsidering the choice of the word. Perhaps he needed to sound more determined. - We will study together this summer. 

Lien nodded without any enthusiasm. She could recognize it when Euan was serious and there was absolutely no way he would change his mind. The thought of spending evenings in a classroom in a muggle university, reciting magical plants and their properties, while muggles would sip from the tenth mug of steaming coffee, cracking an unresolved question of modern science in a passionate excitement, made her sigh with an acceptance of a person that was doomed for life.

\- Come on, now, - said Euan almost apologetically, raising and looking around for something to distract the conversation from the current thread.

He stretched to take off Lien’s dirty pink socks, something he should have done earlier. She absent-mindedly followed his pale, thin hand cover her legs to warm them up, debating whether to tell him about the rest of her exams, all completed with a perfect or a nearly perfect score.

\- Lien.

Euan's voice sounded concerned. He reached for his wand and directed the light closer to Lien's left foot. Just above her ankle there was a slight, blue rush, surrounding two long, although not too deep scratches that reminded of a bite mark. There were also couple of pimples, filled with what appeared to be light-blue liquid.

\- Does it hurt? - he asked, gently pressing the skin next to it. Lien shook her head negatively, straightening up.

\- Probably just a Dental Nettle, - proposed Euan thoughtfully. - Nothing to be worried about, - he added reassuringly.

Lestrange lied down. The sphere of light floated up, illuminating most of the cave. Euan was thinking really hard, recollecting all he knew about Dental Nettles. Remembering the rush, he corrected himself.

\- Or a Dental Nettle Lengua Caeruleus.

He looked on Lien, hiding his smile. It would have been oddly funny if he failed at recognising the magical plant her skin came to contact with right after he threatened to educate her about magical plants and their properties. It has always been of an interest to Euan that the magical plants, even when growing in most ordinary locations, bit or scratched muggles with a negligible frequency, but were sure to catch a wizard.

\- Still nothing to be worried about, - he said. - Might get a little itchy later.

Lien rolled over in the towel, covering herself up in the warmth and the feeling of security it was providing. Although still angry for the future Herbology lessons, she made the decision to share the good news as well.

\- Marvelous, - commented Euan, teasing.

The second year was certainly not the most demanding one, and a perfect score on a final did not really mean awfully a lot, and Euan knew that.

\- Do you want to stay here for the night? - he asked, taking off his coat and also getting covered up in the towel that due to its size could serve just as well as a blanket.

Lien readily nodded. She would in fact be thrilled to stay here until September, even if that meant continuous study of the grass growing in the cave, instead of going back to home. 

\- All right then, - decided Euan.

He put his wand aside, close to the fire. The light slowly dimmed to nothingness. Euan yawned, summoning his backpack to use it as a pillow. Lien drugged his hand in her direction, also claiming it as a pillow. She nervously stuck her nose to her father's chest, spinning inside her mind a question that has been haunting her since March, when she overheard a classmate to voice his intent of escaping from his house one day.

\- Dad, - she whispered, hopping Euan was not sleeping yet. He hummed questioningly, inviting her to continue. - Why don't we go live alone?

Euan opened his eyes. He felt sad and guilty again for forcing his daughter through all the experiences that were associated with coexisting with the rest of his family in the same building. The thought of leaving the manor for good has been occurring to him since long before Lien was born, on far more regular basis, and has caused a few complications.

\- Because that would break your grandfather's heart, - he answered honestly.

\- I guess that would, - agreed Lien disappointedly. She wanted to wander further why the integrity of her grandfather's heart was a concern, but decided not to.

Euan closed his eyes again, having a sigh.

\- When we get back, I'd like you to apologise to your mother if she appears to be expecting that, - he said coldly.

This was another of those times when Euan was not about to change his mind regardless of many things, and Lien could sense that. She knew something along those lines was in order, so she nodded without any enthusiasm, putting a lot of hope on the ambiguity of the condition.

Lestrange put his free hand over her, hugging. Gratitude for her existence and maturity filled him up, reminding once again how much he was missing her in all the past months.

The howling wind and the sound of raindrops hitting rocks on the other side of the cave seemed to have only grown stronger, separating them from the rest of the world, hiding and protecting them from all that could have threatened their unity.

\- Dad, - called Lien after a few minutes of silence, this time excitedly, as she remembered there was a multitude of stories to tell. - I met this man in Talgarth, he fought in a muggle war, with bullets and helicopters…

And talked well past midnight, telling about most unusual muggles she encountered.


	2. Welcome

Jane tilted her head sideways, following the old house elf, whose unusually large head was floating just above the table as he walked serving wine. His fingers were thin and long, suggesting Jane to squeeze them just around the almost perfectly round-shaped knuckles and watch them break. Instead she thoughtfully slided her silver fork through the slice of meat on her plate and, once the elf filled her glass with shimmering red liquid, raised it to the level of her bright blue eyes.

The crimson armchair with a coffee stain the elf failed to remove reflected in the inner wall of the transparent goblet, creating a nice selection of various shades of red and purple. Jane emptied the cup at once and put it on the table, determined not to complete the thought that cut through her mind and demanded attention.

\- Jane.

Jane smiled at her brother in law, a far less handsome Lestrange than the one she married. 

\- Reuben, - she replied, taking a bite of her bleeding slice of raw beef.

\- It appears that your spouse did not make it home last night.

Jane cut another piece of the muscle, reminded of the job she was returning to in less than 24 hours and a job she was enjoying. She was not listening to Reuben, still engaged with the thought she did not intend to pursue. The coffee stain as viewed without distortion was of the exact color as the leather boots, and the raw muscle with even edged cuts was a reminder of the ward she saw those boots in. 

The dream came two moons prior the current morning, with a stinging burning feeling on her right forearm that persisted all the way through, more realistic that anything she had experienced before, covered under the long sleeves of her light summer dress.

\- That would be a shared impression. - Jane confirmed. _The ward, full of suspect wizards with missing limbs, tied to their beds with all imaginable measures, was illuminated with soft red light of the dawn._

\- I would not be surprised if that chimp of yours, - Lestrange sipped from his cut-glass mug, as if discussing the most remote topic and not his own niece.

_Jane stood in the corner of luminous, large room, holding a clipboard and a quill over her rounded, 3-months pregnant belly. She had just recorded the stable hopeless state of a once respected wizard in both conflicting communities, now an aging convicted murderer and a convenient source of unharmed organs._

_Jane's attention however was captured by the bed in the exact geometric center of the ward, occupied by an unconscious teenage girl who she was told was to be treated with the double of the caution that a regular criminal would get._

_The boot she had on her right leg was made of artificial leather, reaching all the way to the knee. Her left leg was shining with unhealthy glitter of sweat, covered in bleeding cuts and oddly shaped deep wounds reminding of bite marks._

_A young wizard sat next to her, on fresh sheets stained with blood. His hand gently rested on girl's bare shoulder, while he was carefully and slowly cleaning the wounds with a piece of wet fabric. His oddly familiar, beautiful serious face bore nothing but infinite affection for the girl, who Jane could diagnose as a lost cause with little doubt._

\- she had it coming...

Jane was a Seer. Visions of her own future would come to her in unorganised, incomprehensible bits, once in a decade, so she never mastered the courage to admit her gift and consider the information it provided worth something.

\- Reuben, - she interrupted in a sweet, dangerous voice of the most innocent and polite adolescent. - An embarrassing disgrace she is, I do not appreciate others insulting my daughter.

\- I apologise, - admitted Reuben with a wide grin.

Jane had another glass of red wine. She was good in her casual, effortless elegance. The thought was rather a pleasant one, and Jane felt the corners of her lips twitch in a faint imitation of self-satisfaction.

\- Would you agree though, dear, - Lestrange continued, spreading bright red colored cream over a slice of bread, - that when your husband and child are absent the aura is measurably better?

Jane stood up, as if there was no question posed.

\- I certainly would, - contributed Rodolphus Lestrange, swallowing the last bite of his portion of raw beef. - Father, - he added with a genuine fear and respect, as the later threw at him disapproving look.

\- Come, - sighed Jane, nodding to Rodolphus and gesturing to follow her. - I had a sheep brought in you can practice on this afternoon.

Younger Lestrange produced an exclamation of excitement that would damage most human beings with functional mental health and jumped up, almost running after Jane.

* * *

Sun of the chilling, white twilight cut through the thick clouds, casting dull, cold light on Cleansweep Five and the wizard on it. Euan felt a raindrop to hit his neck and slide down, beneath his shirt. The soft batiste fabric of rich mint color stuck to his skin in a narrow, thin line. Sharp and freezing, it made him straighten up and breath in with longing, as if the air was being cut. Lien, whose hands were locked around his waist tight enough to hurt, squinted in an instantaneous fear as he moved.

Euan could remember Lien riding on a broomstick she borrowed from her cousins without permission on regular basis, outspeeding experienced adults - mostly himself - chasing her in an attempt to stop. It has been a while she seemed to be uninterested in such stunts, and, relieved he was for the first month, it soon became evident that Lien had acquired certain unwillingness to ride, bordering with a genuine inability, and that made him worried.

Lestrange decelerated, feeling his daughter to somewhat loosen and take a deep breath. She leaned at him, anxiously counting the seconds before landing. 

The castles of their ancestors, hidden from the sight of muggles with high walls of strong and ancient charms, were now visible from behind the elms and beeches. Shining blue goldstone covering the roof of the towers was unwelcoming as ever, approaching faster than Lien would like it to. She was unsure which prospect sounded less appealing: more time on the broom or the pending confrontation with the most proximal of her ancestors.

A warm wave of energy greeted them, as the barrier found them eligible to pass. For a split second Euan felt fading spirits, once inhabiting the land he grew up on, now vanishing into nothingness under the weight of time, to envelop him, throwing at him whatever was still remaining, in a usual attempt to pass their being to something still alive.

Lestrange smiled. Since young age it was a pleasure for him to experience the stories of the past; to become someone else in a vague, undefined sense, and forget it almost immediately. Lien, on the other hand, was met by repelling reflection of her own anticipation, vain and futile.

Euan made a turn, circling the field surrounding the grounds of the castle in a large ring, gradually lowering the height to avoid abrupt maneuvers that he was afraid might scare Lien. She hugged him tighter again, not moving until her feet hit the stone road leading to the gates.

Well preserved skulls of giants and goblins were floating around, constituting an unambiguous warning about the descendants of the people that had acquired them in a fair battle of glorious past. Glowing spears composing the gates bent sideways, opening an entrance. 

Lien pressed her right boot to the ground, taking a few seconds to convince herself that it was solid enough before she decided to climb off the broomstick. Her arms relaxed, disengaging with Euan, and crossed across her chest for a second in a subconscious attempt to close up, protect from the hostile environment. 

Lestrange jumped off with an almost demonstrative ease, not knowing how to state the obvious problem or how to approach it. Instead he put his hand around Lien, uncompromisingly guiding her toward the castle. She pressed her open palm against his coat, unsure whether to go along with him or stand as firm as she could, pushing the moment she had to meet her mother and offer a plausible explanation she did not bother to come up with.

\- Mum will…

Lien's somewhat hoarse voice disappeared in the soft thickness of the white cotton scarf. She stopped right behind Euan and breathed in the cold air to start again, but changed her mind before the words came out.

Lestrange had a sigh and stopped too. He dragged Lien closer to himself, letting her drop on him and pressed her harder, afraid that he might lose her again. The frustrating awareness that she would outspeed him if she were to run away hang in the air.

\- Be nice, - said Euan in a simple, calm intonation that yet somehow made Lien feel obliged to do her best. - She was worried...

\- Damn sure she was, - cut Lien in a hiss before her father could finish and pulled the scarf down, exposing herself to the wind.

\- In her own way, - nodded Euan, now cold and detached.

\- I'm sorry, - said Lien with some hesitation, slowly and unwillingly, apologising not so much for having sworn out loud, as for running from the house. 

Euan squatted with a quiet sigh, carefully sliding his hand across Lien, fighting the temptation to apologise himself, lift her from the ground, hold in his strong thin arms and turn around to hop on old Cleansweep Five and ride away. He caught the pale green of her wide open, rather worried eyes.

\- Is that right? - he questioned with a faint smile. 

Lestrange knew his daughter well enough not to doubt that she meant what she said. It was a tough road to her admitting she had done something she should have not, but it never led to an acceptance she did not feel. At least not with him.

Lien nodded with no confidence, but, encouraged with the unserious attitude Euan was clearly implying, smiled back. Euan straightened up, longing for the spacious pocket of his coat.

\- Here is something you could do, - he informed, producing his wand and pointing it on Lien. - Hold still for me.

Lien looked at the scratched tip of old, rough juniper with slight caution, guessing which non-verbal charm was vibrating in its core. The unpleasant and by now familiar feeling of golden, spiral shaped spell touched her bare legs, transfiguring the comfortable, quiet modern pair of shorts made of neo-blue denim into one of those tight long dresses her old grandmother would wear.

\- Dad.

She stood still as she was asked to, in anger, disorientedly watching the gray t-shirt with large print on she borrowed from Ted in the beginning of the year to turn into a pink blouse just as disgusting and restricting as the dress.

\- Child? - replied Euan with a wide smile, not offended in a slightest.

Slim the chance was, he hoped Jehanne Madelaine would appreciate the presentable appearance of her disobedient daughter - which was a small compensation to disappearing without a trace or warning - at least to a degree of not mentioning it.

\- Shut up, - said Lien, frowning. Seconds ago there was an honest conviction that she had actually brought this on herself and thus had deserved to suffer the consequences. It was now gone.

Euan did not reply. He had mixed feelings on the matter. 

\- I didn't, - he heard Lien mumble, - mean to…

She felt silent without concluding the sentence. Her sight was still fixed at Euan, demanding an explanation and, in a less conscious way, a promise that she will get through. The anticipation of scolding and punishment, biting her just as fine as the uncomfortable clothes her father had wrapped her up in, was getting more than she could handle alone.

\- Cheer up, - said Euan with the usual calmth and confidence that made Lien feel reassured. - It is quite alright to read muggle books, - he continued. - Just be… discreet about it.

\- I got caught on the third one, - said Lien in her defense.

\- Good, - smiled Euan. - What were the other two?

Lien did not answer at once. She pulled the edge of the blouse as hard as she could, watching Euan open the inner gates with an elegant, slight twitch of his wand. Huge door covered with engravings of ancient runes and spells, shimmering with a gentle, colorless light slided, offering a passage.

\- Lord of the Flies, - said Lien with an air of excitement, giving another unsuccessful attempt to tearing the clothes apart. She had a sigh with dreadful acceptance and punched Euan, soft enough to be ignored. - Countable and Uncountable...

Euan ran a hand through Lien's hair, stopping her from finishing the sentence that might have contained a muggle word sure to set her mother off, if the later were within an earshot. He directed the tip of his wand towards the ground, hesitant to put it away, and stepped into the building with no good expectations, his hand still on Lien's head.

\- Ja, - he agreed out of the context. 

Lestrange hold his breath without even realising having done so and went ahead. The rather unusual and impractical architecture of the manor made it impossible to guess which room the main door will lead one to. On top of that it was not uncommon for him to be greeted with a jinx or two when he was younger, making it a habit to be cautious when using the main entrance.

This time the door opened itself on the balcony of the third floor, with a view that often reflected the mood and magical skill of the people on it. Whatever it meant, the bright lime sun now covered about the third of the astonishing blue horizon, contrasting the reality.

Embarrassing and maddening it was, stepping into the warm, luminous terrace Lien was scared, her mind spinning with horrific scenarios exponentially less likely to occur. It felt as if her throat was restrained by a rod cutting the air. Loud inhuman screams source of which she could not even phantom and identifiable distant voices of her mother and cousin were not exactly helping.

\- Be nice, - repeated Euan. Or Lien thought she heard him whisper so before his hand dropped on her shoulder, turned her around and pressed to himself, forbidding from watching that what he saw. There was a thick smell of iron, leading Lien to believe something was bleeding and has been bleeding for a while.

\- Jane.

Lien felt her father's waist to jolt as he acknowledged the presence of his wife in a plain voice, and her heart skipped a beat.

\- Rod…

\- Uncle!

The exclamation that interrupted Euan conducted in a familiar hated voice of his eldest nephew sounded way too excited to be genuine. Rodolphus Lestrange gave his uncle an unpleasant grin. He was missing a tooth that was never recovered for an unknown reason that made his smile even less natural than it already was.

\- I was hoping you will not be joining us until… well, ever, - he informed.

\- Fopdoodle, - Lien snorted.

Rodolphus turned his back, pretending to be mature and ignoring the little insult in his address.

\- Lien! - warned Euan, surprised on not having noticed how his grip got loose enough for Lien to disengage and step aside. She was growing up, becoming stronger and more autonomous with a speed Euan was not following too well, and the realisation of that rather natural fact was a stinging feeling in the back of his head.

Lien did not pay him much attention, occupied with the view Euan apparently did not want her to see. Her mother - a tall witch with gorgeous waterfall of fire red hair and a tight maroon dress reaching just below her knees - stood close to the handrail, her wand pointed forward in an unusual, twisted motion. She turned her sight to her husband and daughter for a short second, her face beaming with the kind of passionate concentration that would make one beautiful and appealing. Her eyebrows plucked out and her teeth dyed black in the best traditions of muggle Heian, Jane did not look remotely beautiful or appealing.

In between herself and Rodolphus was the floating bleeding source of screams. It was an immobilised, fully conscious lamb with its stomach sliced open, serving the educational needs of aspiring healer surgeon, currently dissecting its gallbladder with no apparent knowledge of how to do it properly.

\- Lose the wand, - Jane demanded in a threatful ringing tone. The lamb gave a wild twitch with its entire body and fell silent for a moment as the numbing charm Euan managed to conjure in its direction passed through it.

\- Jehanne, - sighed Euan in a perfect French accent and with a passive condemnation that both he and his wife knew was not going to result in an action. 

His main concern was Lien, who did not seem affected by the impossible cruelty she was witnessing, and, not without regret and disappointment in himself, Euan dropped his wand into the spacious pocket of his overcoat. The lamb, now experiencing the pain as from the scratch, continued scream and cough at a deafening volume.

The stinging feeling became louder in Euan's mind, reminding that just couple of years ago he would not have hesitated to fight Jane, if that meant he could help the lamb. Now, a more mature adult, he preferred the fragile comfort that came with not duelling Jane and letting an innocent creature suffer a horrible death. He felt ashamed of himself and of being such in front of his daughter.

\- I do not believe... - he started, not finding the right words to put his thoughts into a safe, yet meaningful statement.

\- Huh! - Rodolphus slided his hand right below the diaphragm, verifying something he believed he sensed.

Euan lost his decisiveness and stepped towards the door that now led to the dining hall on the third floor of the castle, certain that Lien will follow him. She breathed in the unsettling smell of flowing blood, punishing herself for unwillingness and inability to help the lamb. She tried to listen to and remember the fading screams, she tried not to think of hot mulberry tea Jingie the house elf would be ordered to make for her and the fact that she seemed to have gotten off the hook exactly because her mother was engaged with cutting something open with no consideration for the thing.

However, Rodolphus seemed to have been granted full responsibility over the animal, enabling Jane to deal with her daughter.

\- Gwendolien Jehanné Lestrange. 

Lien stopped and turned around, looking at glitter shoes on high heels Jane wore as muggles wear sleepers, comfortably and casually. 

\- What were you thinking, - she asked in an even and distant, almost pleasant and reassuring voice, containing the rage she had been experiencing, - whippersnapper?

\- N… Nothing, - answered Lien loosely, still looking at the pointed shining toes of her mother's shoes.

Jane pointed her wand right above her shoulder, as if threatening, and made a step in her direction. Small advancement that had Lien jumping up and landing a few feet behind where she was standing, her hands clenched into steady fists, placed in front of her chest in a practical position that would have been quiet advantageous in an actual hand to hand combat. 

\- Ma'am, - she added with a hint of challenge, her sight now fixed on the wand. It was a short, thick stick, made of palm tree and phoenix core, its shape twisted and bent, reflective, as Lien believed, of the crooked nature of its owner.

She glanced at Euan, who could not help smiling with a certain pride for her. He was just about to intervene and tell Lien to apologise, but had leaned to the wall, allowing her to stand up for herself.

The square tip of the wand moved in the slightest and, before the motion was followed by a charm, Lien found herself on the outside of its range. The bigger part of her weight rested on her left leg as she slided her right one across the floor, putting it behind herself, at left. The grandma dress was making the stunt harder and more frustrating than it should have been, but far from making it impossible.

\- This is about time you learned to behave yourself, - hissed Jane, her wand slashing the air, shooting at Lien a legal, not as powerful variation of Cruciatus Curse. Her beautiful although browless face was now threatening, out of control and deeply unpleasant.

At first, she was approaching Lien with no intention of hurting. It was the fast primitive wild reaction that set her off.

Lien lost her balance, as if it was a material thing that could have been denied her in an instant. She observed herself fall on knees, short of breath, as if her body was an autonomous entity. Her stomach twisted with a sudden, short pulse of pain. The shining tiles of the terrace floor spinned in an unpredictable, meaningless dance. 

\- Enough.

She felt the magical energy of her father pierce through her in thousands of warm gentle needles. His voice - calm and uncompromising - pulled her mind out the state reduced to perception of pain and spinning tiles. Lien climbed up on her feet and made a few steps backwards, in Euan's direction, regretting all the rebellion she had ever conducted.

Jane threw a glance at Rodolphus and his now dead educational tool. She waived her wand in their direction, spilling the anger at the lamb, vanishing its corpse with an unprofessional explosion. It would have been a righteous pleasure to accomplish the first curse, to compensate the singular sleepless night she spent worrying about Lien's whereabouts.

\- Lestrange, - she smiled somehow defeated. Jane never called Euan by his name. He was the Lestrange she had to marry, nothing more. - This one here, - she pointed at Lien with her short, crooked wand, walking straight on Euan, - finds it acceptable to disappear and wander off dung knows where, because you, - her wand was now pointing right at his solar plexus, - are a spineless, hopeless retard.

\- Of course, there will be consequence to wandering around, - said Euan, as if stating a matter of fact, lovingly stroking Lien's fluffy hair and not paying any attention to the wand. - Under no circumstances that will be a torturing curse.

Jane smiled wider, less happily. She snapped her fingers, lifting the transfiguration charm from Lien's cloths. Despite her higher status in wizarding world and far better magical education, that simple counter spell required her to put in certain effort. It felt like a slap right across her pale face to be confronted by what she considered to be Euan's pure talent and no hard work.

\- Pretending to be worth something, - she said, her mean voice giving away a slight ring of helplessness, - magician.

Lien hid herself behind her father, feeling another wave of relief swipe over her. She was recognising the often occurring situation in which her parents would exchange insults, offering her the freedom to relocate herself, possibly into the vast green grounds of the castle. 

Euan, as he did most of the times, ignored the comment about his wizarding dignity. Instead he gently pulled Lien back next to himself.

\- Did not you want to apologise? - he wondered.

Lien looked to a side. Rodolphus was critically examining his own wand, for the first time covered in dried blood of an actual creature, completely consumed into the process. His face was glowing with a fascination and some sort of disbelief that he had just now ruthlessly tortured a living creature for absolutely no reason.

\- Lien? - Euan pushed with a clear expectation of an answer.

Lien had a deep sigh, remembering about the Herbology lessons she was to undergo. It was not yet the point where Euan would be absolutely impossible to negotiate with, so she chose not to be nice.

\- Nope. - she said hardly audibly, still looking somewhere behind Rodolphus.

\- How?...

Prior to coming up with the words to express her feelings upon that rejection, Jane raised her hand, longing to slap Lien. That would have been her frustration with her husband's painfully evident magical superiority, with her own incompetence to nurture her daughter and with the arrogant, plain, muggle-like ''nope''. Instead her hand swayed through air, as Lien tilted slightly backwards.

\- Lien, - repeated Euan patiently, still holding his daughter and getting more serious. The point where he would implement the promised consequences was approaching rapidly, the pleasantness of consequences directly proportional to Lien's collaboration.

\- This is what you get, uncle, - contributed Rodolphus, approaching, - from letting little children play with… - he paused for an expressive instant. - muggles, - he concluded with an obvious disgust.

\- The buffoon, - added Jane with a nodd. It was almost a game for her: pushing Lien to a point of reacting such that her husband would be more or less forced to agree with punishing her.

\- I did nothing wrong, - snapped Lien. - No one would live in this madhouse with idiots...

She had grown immune to being told about how disgraceful, shameless and ungrateful disappointment she was. It was different when they were aiming at his father's muggle colleagues and Ted in particular. If Euan was not next to her, his large, heavy hand on her shoulder, she would have had that light-weight imitation of a adolescent human male that happened to be her cousin flat on his back, regretful of having opened his mouth.

\- Grounded. - cut Euan before she could say anything more. - Until...

\- For the summer, - completed Jane, smiling all the way up to her little pale ears. - I do not wish to see you anywhere near the gates, Gwendolien. Do you understand me?

\- But, - Lien could feel her voice grow smaller, less important and more scared as she heard herself whisper the objection. She turned to Euan. - I want to see Ted...

\- Well, dear, - smiled Rodolphus, his voice pure sugar, - I want a good, functioning witch for my little sister. We do not get all that we want, do we?

\- Get lost! - screamed Lien. She jumped up, aiming to hit him, right into his slim, oddly curved chest, but Euan easily put her down.

\- You heard your mother, - he shrugged. Jane had compromised all the way from Cruciatus to simple grounding in the end, and it would have not been polite to require more of her. - I still would like you to apologise, - he added with an iron-clear expectation.

The first second Lien wanted to express the hatred she felt towards Euan. It was as if he was the sole obstacle standing between her and Ted doing muggle mathematics, practicing muggle combat techniques and eating fruit salads for all meals. The next moment she remembered that her father would often be part of all the fun, and that she in fact loved him very much. 

Thus, instead she punched him as hard as she could, swallowed the anger boiling inside her and ran into the house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here is an addition to chapter 2 :) I realised that the desicion to jump from the beginning of summer to the first day of classes had compromised Jane Lestrange as a character. She is not a mere background figure in Lien's life, she is her mother. The Lestrange family had been presented to us more or less as pure evil in the fandom, only through Rodolphus and Rabastan. I am going to describe more members of the family, staying as close to canon as possible.
> 
> So, I will be adding another chapter (or 2 more chapters?) describing Lien's summer before her third year.
> 
> Let me know what you think!


	3. Conversations. Here and There

_We will create the Good from the Evil, as there is nothing else to create it from.  
Strugatsky brothers, “Roadside Picnic”_

Euan Lestrange stopped in the middle of a wide corridor illuminated with unnatural golden light. The charms sustaining it were wearing out, so that strange patterns and shadows would often appear on the walls, merging and vanishing with no apparent logic. Closer to the ceiling there was an odd image of nested silhouettes, cast by the blurry reflection of the steam, rising from the surface of the hot soup he had brought.

Euan snapped his fingers, and the artificial light faded away, replaced by shades of the carmine dusk. He then turned around, facing a metal door that separated the room he had once occupied himself from the area in space he was occupying at the moment. His thin fingers gently hit the cold, repelling smooth surface of it, producing a dull sound.

The response came rather loud and discouraging.

\- Bog off!

Euan pulled down the door handle to no avail and had a deep breath, reminding himself that his daughter was in the tender age of transitioning from a child to a teenager and required patience.

\- That is not a way to talk to your father, Lien, - he said. In a calm, narrating manner.

The metal door slid back, opening a passage for a thin strip of dull warm light. There was a pale smell of piled up laundry and unfresh food that hit his nose, as Euan pushed the door further and stepped in. Lien’s was a large room, with a few inch wide window, stretching from floor to the ceiling.

\- I thought it’s Jingie, - said Lien quietly, presenting the excuse for her profane greeting, as if that was a valid justification.

She dropped down on the bed without looking at Euan, defensively hugging one of the pillows scattered around the room, with her bare legs crossed in front of her. She was in a brown shirt with a brightly colored, low-quality print of a hamburger on it, covered in stains of mud and perhaps ice cream.

Euan had a sit on the corner of her bed. Uncomfortably, deliberately choosing to be as far from her as he could. The fragile yet tangible barrier that seemed to have risen between them over past few hours he had allowed Lien to be left alone was now concerning.

\- That is not a way to talk to Jingie either, - said Euan with a slight caution, mildly. He could see that Lien was upset and had very limited tolerance for him at the moment. He was watching her with attention and care, considering all the possible approaches he could think of, carefully balancing the tray with dinner he had brought on his left hand.

She did not look at him. It was still rather odd for her, seeing Euan treat their house elf with all the respect a good wizard would receive. However, as there were more prominent issues at hand, she did not react. She was trembling the pillow, spilling at it the anger and destructiveness she would have directed at Euan otherwise.

\- How is your leg? - he asked.

\- As if you cared! - snapped Lien, even before processing the question. She was tense։ a canned reaction, ready to burst at any given moment.

Euan had slowly placed the tray on a long forgotten textbook and was now deciding where to locate the spoon he had produced from the pocket of his shirt, appearing as if that simple, unimportant task was claiming the best of his mind.

\- I do. - he replied, still thoughtfully rotating the spoon in between his thin fingers. - I care.

Lien pulled herself over, flavoring the tension build up in her muscles. With a gruff sound she found herself closer to her father, the tension lifting from her hands and the pillow dropping to the wooden floor. Being angry with him was not exactly a voluntary or a conscious choice she had made.

\- Would you mind if I had a look? - asked Euan gently, finally putting the spoon on a relatively clean section of the surface of the desk.

Lien nodded after a second’s thought. She moved to the edge of her bed and lifted the leg in question extending it in Euan’s direction. He twisted his thumb and middle finger in a peculiar way, pointing towards a fashionable ambiguous shape of Prussian production floating just below the ceiling, turning it into a sphere glowing with a bright yellow light, sufficient to illuminate the room as the sun would on a good day.

\- I suggest...

Euan paused, as he had to be mindful of times when it was in his daughter’s best interest to receive a well-formed, strict instruction on what was expected of her, as opposed to passively offering an insight and expecting her to make a reasonable choice.

\- Your mother ought to have a look, too, - he said.

\- Not the damn witch! - interrupted Lien without much thought, spitting out "witch" very much like her mother pronounced "muggle", as a self-explanatory insult.

\- Tomorrow at latest, - continued Euan, ignoring that.

\- Fine! - Lien cut again with a clear challenge.

Her fingers slid through the inch-wide distance between the wall and her bed, grabbing the mattress. She pulled herself to the cold wall, folding her legs in a perfect lotus pose in front of her. She had a loud sigh, communicating the increase of her frustration with the presence of her father.

\- Are you angry with me? - inquired Euan. In that exact intonation he could have inquired whether Lien would prefer an apple over a pie, or whether it was raining or not. He was calm and equally accepting of both answers, in a way that disarmed Lien, stripped her off the sass and anger for an instant, made her feel the ridiculousness of her earlier exclamations.

\- I miss Ted, - she informed instead of an answer, getting worked up again. - I haven’t seen him since March.

\- March, - echoed Euan, at first completely neutrally. He slowly turned back, now facing his daughter, who was still a few seconds away from realising that she had - without a prompt, given away an information she most certainly shouldn’t have had. - That was around the time you were supposed to turn beetles into buttons and back, - Euan hypothesised, growing sarcastic and granting Lien the hint that she was now perhaps in a bigger trouble than she was a minute ago, - was it not?

Lien remained silent, catching the moment of Euan getting serious and distant. Until that moment he was negotiating, hoping to reconnect, and now he was reduced to an adult, doing his stupid adult thing. She threw a glance in his direction, hoping that he was smiling.

\- How did you manage that? - asked Euan.

Part of him was genuinely curious how was his twelve year old, admittedly below average of a wizard daughter able to either travel in and out an elite school of Witchcraft and Wizardry or smuggle in a fully grown muggle into there without anyone - including the muggle, noticing. Part of him was worried that was possible.

\- I… uh, - Lien paused, picking the right word, - borrowed an invisibility cloak from a… - she paused again, trying to decide how to describe her practically non-existent relationship with the owner of the rare gudget, - a classmate. Then there is a tunnel from Hogwarts to Hogsmeade. - Lien threw a glance at Euan again. He was not appreciating what he was hearing. - Right across the Snakehole… the Dungeons.

\- Yes, - confirmed Euan after a short silence. - there is a tunnel right across the… Dungeons.

He would have said Snakehole if he weren’t angry, which, as Lien was getting more and more convinced in, he very much was.

\- I flooed to London from the post office, - she finished up with no taste for the otherwise a thrilling adventure. - It was easy from there.

\- You can be really bad at telling stories sometimes, - concluded Euan with mixed feelings, following another few seconds of heavy silence. He could not help feeling proud of her pulling such stunts, and he knew that the danger Lien had subjected herself to were genuine.

\- So? - Lien smiled an unsure, broken smile. She touched Euan’s back, as if building up the courage to hug him. It was as if their roles were swapped, with her now being a negotiator, hoping to get away with her unnecessarily confessed crime.

\- That was quiet irresponsible, - Euan informed. Lien pulled back.

\- It turned out alright, - she attempted an excuse with a small shrug. - McGonagall did not…

\- Your teachers are not who I am concerned about, Lien, - interrupted Euan, his voice raising just a little bit. - We are in a country at a state of active war, - he continued, now still and just loud enough to be heard. - Britain is no Norway.

\- Jeg vet, - cut Lien in an aggressive, blameful whisper. She had a deep breath, a bit guilty to perhaps having hurt Euan, and repeated in English, as if apologising. - I know this is no Norway.

Euan did not answer at once. He got more comfortable on the bed, folding his legs in front of him.

\- Come here, - he said somewhat imperatively, longing his arm towards Lien. She raised her large, pale green eyes at him, with only too familiar expression of mixed hesitation and hope. Euan put his hand across her shoulder, firmly grabbing, and pulled her into his lap. Lien’s light brown hair got into his face, as he bent and leaned to her forehead. - I love you more than I can express, brat, - he said. - I don’t want you to get hurt.

\- Stop calling me brat, - Lien mumbled.

\- Brat, - repeated Euan with a faint smile. - I am serious, - he said, as if it was not clear enough. - Cut the trouble for both of us, huh?

Lien nodded. The wall between them was crumbling, and what mattered now most of all was that she loved her father just as much as he loved her, and didn’t want him to get hurt neither.

\- I hate them all, - Lien nodded at the closed door, meaning her mother, grandfather, granduncle, uncle, his wife, their children and the house elf, each one of them on their own and all of them collectively.

\- I understand, - Euan admitted. - It is still not alright to run away…

\- Leaving me here alone is not alright neither! - Lien abruptly straightened up, letting Euan’s hand slide off her and drop on the bed. She couldn’t stand it when he was lecturing her or merely starting to lecture her on coexistence with her mother or cousins.

\- That is enough with the attitude. - said Euan in a rather demanding manner, although in truth it was not easy for him to cut her off like that, and especially on a quite justified objection. - I am sorry, - he added.

\- Shut up, - Lien picked up another pillow, in a way replacing her father with it.

\- Sorry, - repeated Euan, not offended in a slightest. - I should have been with you, - he continued with all honesty. Having had missed out on an entirety of six months of Lien’s life suddenly struck him, - Unnskyld.

\- Dad, - Lien carefully enveloped Euan, pressing her nose against his back and letting the pillow smash in between himself and herself. - You don’t have to worry about me, - she said with a conviction bordering with naivety, as she was not feeling good at having made him to apologise thrice, despite not being sure what exactly he was apologising for. -At all. I’ll be fine. I promise.

Instead of answering, Euan jumped off the bed, letting Lien hang from him. The pillow slid on the floor with a dull bump.

Lien tightened her grip, managing her own weight by the strength in her arms. She tried to slip away with no success, bursting in a loud and genuine laughter as her father skillfully pulled her off his back and threw her up to the ceiling, playing, just like he used to do when she was a child. For Euan it was rather pleasing to realise that he had perhaps become significantly stronger, as Lien had definitely become much heavier since the last time he had caught her free falling body.

In a second Lien twisted herself in the air and, instead of falling back into her father’s hands, hold on to a crack in the ceiling; swang for couple of seconds regaining her balance and threw herself on the bed.

\- Well, now that you promised, - Euan shrugged, smiling with a certain bittersweet feeling. On one hand he did not want to argue with Lien any further. On the other hand, he was responsible to ensure her actually being fine. - Come have a dinner, - he offered, having a sit at the desk. Overflowing with scratch paper, sketches, pencils, pens, notes and all sorts of garbage now it was twice as messy as it was tidy and organised under his ownership.

\- I am not... - started Lien, nevertheless relocating closer to Euan and catching the spoon he threw at her.

\- Hush! - interrupted Euan in an odd no-nonsense, tired and supportive at the same time manner. - You haven’t had a bite since morning, brat. Be reasonable.

\- I wish I had a stupid word for you, - informed Lien with no grudge, lifting the bowl of steaming lentil soup, got comfortable and started eating, developing the appetite as she went. Euan was watching her, slowly chewing on half a slice of a red pepper from the salad, still contemplating on how much Lien had grown up since Christmas.

Her face seemed a little thinner than before. Her arms were slightly larger, with her muscles playing under the tight layer of tan skin, pointing on a high possibility of her climbing and exercising more often than doing her homework.

\- Would you agree that there will be certain challenges in getting me to sign your Hogsmeade permit? - he asked. - Now that I have learned that…

Lien shrugged. She couldn’t bother much about Hogsmeade.

\- I will, - Euan paused. He deemed it important to be as honest and open with his daughter as conceivably possible. - ask your teachers to be sure that you never pull this off again.

Lien nodded. She seemed rather engaged in fishing grains of lentil from her dinner than the supposed punishment inflicted upon her. In fact, as she came across witches and wizards in Knockturn Alley that scared her to the point she was ashamed to admit, she developed an appreciation for an external excuse not to sneak out to London.

Lien suddenly looked at Euan straight into the eyes, putting her spoon down and picking a slice of bread; preparing herself to ask a question spinning in her mind especially furiously in last few hours.

\- Is mum right? - she spit right out. - About Ted and… all the others?

\- What do you think? - dodged Euan.

\- Ted is great, - said Lien immediately, even somewhat defensively. - But… he didn’t tell you that we met, because I had asked him, and… I appreciate it, and no wizard would have done that for me… - Lien paused for a second. Those were rather conflicting arguments. 

Euan was able to see that she was observant enough to understand Ted was perhaps rather supposed to cooperate with the adult than herself. On the other hand, he had trusted her and done her a favor in choosing not to.

\- To be fair, I do not know many wizards. - Euan nodded, letting her carry on. - Mum doesn’t know him, and she is just being...

\- Ted is your friend, - interrupted Euan before Lien would insult her mother. - How about all the other muggles?

\- They are good, too. - Lien swallowed a spoonful of boiled potatoes and carrots. - Smarter than anyone at Hogwarts, - she added with a conviction and leaned forward, some sort of passion sparkling in her pale eyes. - Imagine if Ted could use arithmancy charms to do his calculations for him. He could break, for example, a Vigenére cipher in an hour or less, instead of doing the mind-numbing work by hand for days! - Euan politely nodded, lacking the remotest understanding what Vigenére cipher meant. - And how much more complicated ciphers he would have been able to implement! We are, - she picked her bowl again, finishing the soup, - already developing sophisticated computing devices that are getting quite close to the power of charms. As much as I can understand, at least. Muggles are cool!

It was somewhat concerning that Lien had subconsciously included herself in the generic "we" while referring to muggles, but not particularly important. Her idea of muggle - wizard cooperation was appealing and dear to Euan, and he, in his turn, was subconsciously proud of himself as a parent.

\- You have been spending quite some time with Ted, haven’t you? - he inquired with little doubt.

Lien nodded. She would have loved to bragg that in February alone she had made six trips, but didn’t want to provoke Euan.

\- Is your mum wrong then? - he continued, also not wanting to argue.

\- Well, that Chemistry genius grandpa at your department is a lot worse than McGonagall, - Lien thoughtfully raised her bowl to the level of her mouth and drunk up the remaining liquid. - I guess she has a point, but… What do you think? - she fired back.

\- Well… I don’t know. I don’t believe there is anything special about being a wizard.

\- Or being human. Jingie there is just as good as that stupid… - Lien was meaning to name a housemate, the one that inspired her to run away from the house, than the fact of his very existence felt like a secret she should keep from Euan. - Rodolphus.

\- I wouldn’t argue with that, - smiled Euan. - Jingie deserves just as much - if not more, respect as anyone else. The important thing might be to understand why does your mother believe there is something fundamentally different about your extraordinarily gifted of a surgeon cousin and the house elf?

Lien gave Euan a puzzled look. She often wondered what is wrong with her mother or the Death Eaters, but it had never occurred to her there might be a reason to hating muggles, associated with some perceived differences. She yawned and leaned backwards, lying on her bed, too tired and privileged enough not to dive into thinking more about it right now. 

Euan, also tired and having a job next morning, stood up, snapping his fingers to turn the light off.

\- Here is a deal, child, - he offered instead of wishing her good night. Lien snorted, although she was hoping Euan would suggest a legitimate way for her to get out of the house and catch up with Ted and the rest of her father’s students and colleagues, since she was confident in her inability to sneak out while he was around. - I can see if your mother will consider reevaluating her decisions if I see the effort.

\- I can clean up the room, - offered Lien, testing the possible enterprise against her father’s standard of a good effort. - And go through a chapter for Herbology every day? - she added.

\- And help Jingie, - smiled Euan somewhat maliciously. - With dishes, or...

\- Deal! - cut Lien before Euan would put in more terms. - God natt.

\- Brat, - threw in Euan for one last time. - God natt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- original of the quote: Мы будем делать Добро из Зла, потому что его больше не из чего делать.  
> \- Norwegian insertions:  
> Jeg vet - I know  
> Unnskyld - Sorry  
> God natt - Good night
> 
> YouTube and Google translate were my only sources of Norwegian. Please, let me know if I have messed up!  
> spoiler alert: If and when Dolohov enters this piece of fiction, there will be some Russian. And, since the author is a native Russian speaker, it might get fun and spicy!
> 
> Please, let me know what you think! :)


	4. Limits

It was couple of nights after the full moon and around nineteen hours before the Hogwarts Express left the station that summer when Lien put a side the last bunch of spoons she had washed and climbed up on the sill, glancing over the available ingredients and contemplating what to do for the dinner. She wanted to cut up some pineapples and boil them with rice or spinach - as an experiment, as well as a demonstration of how little she cared about the nutritional preferences of her primarily carnivorous family.

Lien slid off to the floor, grabbed two large pineapples from the shelf and laid them on a cutting board. She applied the edge of the knife just below the leaves, to the thick, wood-like skin, slowly rotating the knife and trying to find the right angle for the cut. The smooth surface of the blade, reflecting bright afternoon sun, was beautiful. 

Even though three of her fingers had cuts covered with thick stripes of a plaster that were now wet and hurting a bit, there was some comfort Lien found in rolling her fingers around the handle and pushing it through the strong, inflexible material. Inflicting more pressure on the cuts and feeling them more acutely. Lien had a twisted, odd appreciation for pain and violence. She valued an opportunity to discover her boundaries or push someone to their limits. She thought of it as of becoming stronger, as of conquering one more steep climb, one more mountain.

There was perhaps something concerning about that as well, as Lien would not hesitate to test the feeling for a knife held against the pale, gentle neck of one of her cousins, shall the right circumstances come into being, although not yet on the level of a finalised formal thought. It was perhaps fortunate that neither her parents were aware of those tendencies nor the circumstances came along.

Her father sat near the large window, in front of a complicated multidimensional construction of Latin words and ancient runes, floating and glowing with different colors. He appeared completely focused on the runes closer to him, thinking how to insert those into the construction without ruining it. Jingie - the house elf, sat on the opposite side, comfortably stretched on top of a large pillow. He was observing his master with a hint of pessimistic challenge, as he knew there was not much that could have been done for the game on his part.

\- Would you like to call this a draw, - offered Jingie in a soft, quiet voice, - dearest master Euan?

\- Hold on. - said Euan. His hand cut through the air in a gentle motion, and three of the red runes floating on his side regrouped, pushing off a six-syllable expression Jingie had on his. - How about now? 

Jingie nodded in response. His old wrinkled face beamed with a sort of exhaustion and forgiveness - in his standards, what Euan had pulled off was rather desperate and childish.

\- Dad. - called Lien. She was standing in front of an open cupboard, confronted with a choice. - Shall I boil pasta? - She pulled the large box with a little image of the wizard that produced it, and continued, having spot a larger box with pictures of various vegetables. - We’ve got cauliflower, too.

\- I wouldn’t mind either. - Euan shrugged. - Jingie?

\- Cauliflower, - said Jingie, after a pause. - Put in red mushrooms, too. 

\- Please. - Lien said, rolling her eyes.

She despised Jingie more often than she did not. Euan had more or less forbade her from ordering him, making it significantly harder to like him. On an intellectual level Lien knew she would have agreed, - at least in a carefully orchestrated conversation, that the power she had over a much more experienced and in fact magically stronger being was arbitrary and unjustified. On the level of the present moment, she did not see Jingie beyond his social status.

\- Please, little master, - Jingie’s voice was soft and peaceful, echoing with the memories of decades of far worse abuse he had to endure, and only mildly sarcastic. - Put in some red mushroom, too.

Jingie, on his part, had mixed feelings about Lien. Her father was perhaps the single person the elf had a genuine respect for, independent from the magic that tied them. Lien resembled him more than anyone else seemed to realise, but she lacked his compassion and had often hit or snapped at him, preventing the affection Jingie had for Euan to spread on her.

\- Sure. - said Lien, jumping up the sill again: the cauldron in which she was to boil the dinner was tall enough that she couldn’t reach its top from the floor.

\- Lien!

\- What? - she queered innocently, pouring over all the cauliflowers.

She was now balancing on a narrow, slippery surface, constituting a great resemblance to a cartoon witch on a muggle postcard, squatting next to a cauldron of a steaming potion, the bright red shirt she had acquired during her unsanctioned trip earlier in summer reaching all the way to her knees. Her movements were exact, with a tangible air of strength and confidence.

\- Get down, - said Euan, without even looking at her.

Part of Lien wanted to be stubborn, for the sheer joy of being stubborn. The other part of Lien cherished the remaining less than nineteen hours she could spend with her father before she had to leave for Hogwarts. She jumped down - effortlessly, with a certain inelegant grace of practicality.

\- Fine, - she whispered post-factum, approaching the cutting board with the now carved pineapples. She cut a few slices and started mincing them into smaller pieces - fast, and careless for the details.

Jingie was critical of both Lien disrespecting what he considered an important component to descent food - the size and shape of pineapple cubes, and the overall enterprise of punishing the girl through entrusting her his job. On the other hand, Jingie did not lack an appreciation for the rare opportunity to play wizarding scrabble - a game he was exceptionally good at. So, his concerns remained unvoiced, and his peaceful, expressive face was now beaming with satisfaction and pleasant anticipation, as Euan was coming up with more entertaining strategies.

\- Dad. - called Lien after some time. - What if…

\- No, - interrupted Euan, perfectly aware of the question his daughter was going to ask. - This conversation is as over now, as it was over in the morning. Professor McGonagall agreed that it would be best to…

\- But, - Lien stubbed a slippery piece of pineapple and raised it above the cutting board. - I was in this madhouse the whole time!

\- We can agree that was a proportionate outcome to what your mother and I had to deal with, - contrasted Euan, in an intonation that made it clear that this assertion was not open to a debate either.

\- Ja, - nodded Lien, slightly embarrassed.

Despite her genuine determination not to cause her father any more trouble, she managed to get into a fight with Gregor Nott - a spoiled brat, begging for a good punch. His parents’ status had made it possible for him to swing his wand around while a minor and outside Hogwarts, and he just wouldn’t shut up about all the muggles he had messed with in summer. Now the idiot was visiting a cosmetic healer twice a week, hoping that the substantial bruises on his face would fade away before he had to show it to the public.

\- He jinxed me first, - said Lien, biting on the pineapple piece at the edge of the knife.

Euan was on her side - completely and unconditionally, except he also was the adult experienced enough to accept that this was a fight of a more political profile. Lien had just lost her temper, and there was no reason to let it slide away. Thus, just after being made aware of the happened, Euan found it to be his responsibility to annihilate the prior deal with Lien and to start a correspondence with her Head of the House. 

\- I don’t have to sneak out, - she started again. - You could come and...

\- Ted won’t be going anywhere anytime soon, - cut Euan. Lien sniffed. She had started the conversation with no real hope, and could admit it was fair. - What you are proposing, however, does not sound impossible.

Lestrange nodded to Jingie. As if they were childhood friends, understanding each other without words. The elf snapped his fingers, decomposing the remaining pineapples into perfect geometric shapes and neatly relocating them into a bowl that manifested itself out of thin air.

\- That was nice of Jingie! - casually informed Euan. He waved his hand, squeezing another rune into the three dimensional table. - I am doomed, Jingie, - he observed in the same casual intonation.

If Lien was a little older, she might have noticed that her father was not talking about the game; but she was the age she was - excited about the loose promise of meeting her friend before Christmas. She stepped aside, letting Jingie snap his long, bone-thin fingers a few more times, pouring mushrooms into the cauldron and getting the fire to the state he prefered.

Lien washed her hands and approached Euan. Her initial intention was to drop on him. Hug him, covering his face with her hair. Then she thought that some respect was due to activities her father was engaged in, even if that was a long lost match with the house elf. She tied her hair into a bun and carefully sat on the arm of the sofa, crossing her feet in front of herself. 

\- Cauliflowers and mushrooms, huh, - said Euan with an unserious judgement, as if conspiring. Lien smiled.

It has been brought to Euan’s attention that his daughter did not even once include an ingredient derived from a sentient creature, which made the punishment Euan intended to be his daughter’s to rather be such for the rest of the family. The Lestranges, so happened, among multitude of other things, did not share the ridiculous compassion or respect towards non-pureblood or non-human beings their youngest offspring had, and were quiet outraged about their new plant-based diet. Euan though was somehow able to navigate all the aggressive comments, allowing Lien to prepare food that aligned with her sentimental beliefs.

\- Dearest master Euan, - whispered Jingie, content with himself. - I can offered a draw again, but that is not fair anymore.

\- It is not indeed, - agreed Euan with an insincere devastation.

Lien watched Jingie crush her father with longer and longer phrases after each turn. She could not understand much, and did not seem to be bothered by that. She was even somewhat proud in her ignorance of ancient languages or runes, - a quality that set her apart from the most of British pureblood youth, and brought closer to its muggle counterpart. 

She pulled a folded piece of parchment from her pocket and opened it, staring at it out of ideas. The documented was a neat mathematical challenge Euan had told her about last week. A challenge that started millenia ago, with a thought experiment of a racing hero and reptile. 

Wise man named Zeno had proposed that it would be possible for a tortoise to outspeed Achilles if given a non-zero head start, as Achilles would be bound to cover the non-zero head start in a non-zero time, which would enable the tortoise to gain another, smaller yet necessarily non-zero head start; and the cycle would be there for infinite time and infinite distance. Since it was evident that in reality an average ancient Greek reptile had no chance of outspeeding an average ancient Greek hero, the problem persisted through centuries as one of Zeno’s paradoxes. 

\- Did you manage to sort it out? - asked Euan with a little teasing.

Lien did not reply at once. She thought the best if left alone, in silence and with the time to get a feel, to reach a conceptual understanding of what is happening in the particular problem and how would an input affect its course. She had a sharp mind, fast at spotting patterns and drawing generalisations; if born to muggle parents, she might have developed the brain essential to success at theoretical sciences muggles had been entertaining themselves with.

\- It’s almost one, - said Lien, doodling on the paper. - I don’t know how almost.

Euan turned to her, somewhat impressed. In next second his hand laid on Lien’s shoulder, shaking her out of balance and pulling her on himself. It was not clear to either of them how Euan was able to maintain enough upper body strength to top that of Lien without consistent effort. Perhaps, it was the tempestuous flow of magic through his veins that reflected on his muscles and bones.

Jingie watched them with a mixture of judgement and forgiveness. He snapped his fingers again, reducing the holographic representation of the game into its box, and silently apparated from the kitchen, not at all disappointed in leaving his victory unregistered. Enjoying his existence along with one of his masters for so long did not appear right to him, even if the master was his beloved Euan Charles - the most unreasonable, kind and non-conforming wizard Jingie had the misfortune of serving to.

Lien felt a little embarrassed as well - she momentarily straightened up and squeezed herself in between Euan and the wall of the armchair. She leaned at his slim chest, thinking of the coming four months when she would not be able to see him. Euan gently put his arm on her shoulder. He too was painfully aware that she was growing up, distancing from him due to more than one reason. 

He stretched his hand across her, reaching for the parchment Lien had covered in attempts to tame the arbitrarily long list of negative powers of two.

\- The current consensus is that it is exactly one, - he informed.

Some, inspired by the invention of calculus by Newton and Leibniz that had essentially equated infinity to small enough or large enough, believed that there was no paradox in there: certain infinite series of decreasing numbers, such as consecutive negative powers of two Lien was dealing with, according to then newly defined realm of calculus, were bound to sum up into a well-defined number. Less, like Euan and, as turned out, Lien, were of the opinion that the concept was more complicated than that, and required a deeper understanding of what infinity was, if anything conceivable at all.

\- Good, - praised Euan, summoning the parchment and scheming through it.

Lien, with no prior knowledge of converging or infinite sums, seemed to having had redefined some of the concepts majority of people would be introduced to only in an undergraduate calculus class to formalise her intuition. 

\- It is never exactly one, - contradicted Lien confidently. - See, - she grabbed the paper from Euan’s hand, and started writing. - No matter how long you keep on adding, you will always end up with something less than...

Euan was listening to her with attention and patience. It was pleasing to him that whenever there was a room for opinion his daughter was often deriving conclusions similar to his own. 

\- Here is another way of looking at it, - he said. The quil Lien was holding escaped her grip and started writing as Euan explained. In an exceptional calligraphic handwriting. - If you think of a function F with two inputs - another function f and a rough description of input to f, you can start looking on the relation between F and input...

\- That’s just plugging x into small f, - observed Lien, a bit frustrated on still not being told that she was right.

\- Hold on. - The quil was drawing arrows and symbols Lien was seeing for the first time. - Capital F is describing the behaviour of f, not calculating its actual value, so it can work with x as it approaches infinity…

\- How can something approach infinity? - interrupted Lien. - That’s meaningless… Um, - she started over with less confidence, understanding more as the quill wrote more definitions and communicated more information. - An abstraction, - she read out loud, enjoying the fresh word.

Lien grabbed a pencil from the drawer and started writing again, her beautiful face serious and excited at the same time.

\- The F is called the limit of f, - continued Euan, having the quil write more around Lien’s hand and the pencil, - and is defined by a function, the variable and...

\- What is this?!

The rude interruption came in a hoarse, aggressive voice, with a grump, rather well-fed old man.

\- Father, - registered Euan. The mild, yet genuine happiness of explaining mathematics momentarily fading into an exhaustion and an obvious unwillingness to have whatever conversation was coming at him.

Lien did not catch the moment Euan had her behind himself, further in the armchair, as if protecting her. She could feel her fists sealing into the walls of the armchair, the anger raising up in her at the mere sight of her grandfather. 

Crius Lestrange was an old, purposeless man with a protruding watermelon stomach more than he was anything else. For as far as Lien could remember, he had appeared either raising his cane to hit her or shouting at her parents, claiming that they were raising a chimp instead of a witch. It was not as much the pain or the fear associated with him, as it was the anger - every time he had conversed with her father, Euan’s usually calm, moderately cheerful face was inevitably changed to a dull expression of most genuine, profound sadness.

\- These clothes! - condemned Crius, pointing at Lien with his cane. Lien hissed, and stopped at that - by now her appearance was criticised more often than allowed her to care about it. - Showing off your legs as a prostitute!

Crius Lestrange was never seen - either by his son or granddaughter, conversing in a manner that could have been documented without an exclamation mark. He was loud and confrontational by default, and on frequent occasions when he was such by choice, he sounded rather desperate and hopeless.

He was an unfortunate man with a complicated fate - born to a couple of powerful and cruel wizards with no trace of magical capabilities of his own, his whole life Crius was treated as something in between a disabled animal and a doormat. He developed an almost religious appreciation of his uncles, aunts and siblings, all of whom were powerful and cruel wizards as well; he was reduced into an imitation of his impossible self that could have had produced magic, pretended to be arrogant, confident and righteous in ordering those inferior to him.

\- Father, - repeated Euan, being as calm as he still was able to. Crius’ rapidly moving bright blue eyes switched from Lien to him. - What is it?

Euan was rather certain the reason his dear parent found his way to the kitchen was non-trivial. Crius nodded, confirming the assumption, and dropped on the sofa with a loud bump.

Lien could not help but to imagine her foot imprinted on the almost perfectly circular belly of her grandfather; there was a technique foreign name of which she had forgotten, but had been practicing every single day for over half a year, she would not mind to test on someone.

\- You are an ungrateful stinky bastard, - said Crius with a dogmatic conviction. - you know that?

When his own son started showing great magical potential, Crius had devoted himself to ensure Euan would be able to enter the pureblood elite. But Euan turned out a shameless blood traitor, dropping out from Hogwarts and pulling himself through higher muggle education, making him an ungrateful bastard for once and for all, no matter how often and how hard Euan tried to reconcile.

\- Don’t call my…

\- Lien. - cut Euan before she would go further, calm as ever. - Be quiet.

Lien punched the armchair, hard enough to hurt herself. Getting older, she was gaining a better understanding of why Euan was not letting her to respond as she felt compelled. A yet foggy, immature, frustrating acception of him being right.

\- You little… Anyways, - Crius interrupted himself. With years he came to perceive his son just as much of an authority as his own siblings or parents - at a unique level of still demanding an unreasonable obedience from him as from a helpless child and at the same time fearing him, just as he feared any other wizard. - While you are wasting time here with whatever nonsense this is…

The parchment Lien had been writing on rolled itself and disappeared in the pocket of her shirt with a silent snap.

\- Reuben was telling that you have plenty of _actual_ work piled up. 

Euan took a deep breath. The statement and its wording was taking him decades back, when he was a teenager and an adolescent, being scolded and educated on how to prioritise his life and what to be grateful for. It was demeaning and hard to sit through still being treated as the rebellious, stupid child, ungrateful to the generous adults.

\- Yes, - Euan exhaled. - I do perhaps have things I should take care of in the... office.

He was long past the stage when he tried to communicate to his father that he had found complete fulfillment in his academic work in the muggle world. He felt that by putting up with the minimum wage mundane job at their ancestral establishment, he was doing his father a favor, by giving him the peace of mind that his son had a respectable occupation along the one he was ashamed of, and that the favor was not appreciated enough. 

\- You know that, and you are sitting here, - Crius’ voice was raising, his eyes drilling both Euan and his daughter with disgust and condemnation, - and letting this girl…

\- I understand, - said Euan firmly. - I will look into it, - he promised with all the intention of doing so. 

Lien looked at him - with a not fully rationalised respect of his patience, voluntary obedience and humbleness. She was also struck by a sudden wave of gratitude that neither she nor her father had inherited the physical traits common to the rest of her family. 

Crius was a bolding short man with rounded shoulders, wrinkled angry face and lifeless, bored eyes. He smelled with a wasted life. Euan, on the other hand, was a complete opposite: his almond-shaped eyes of deep juniper color were burning with life and a deep passion for number of things. He was a well built, slim yet handsome man and looked nothing like one would expect of a person of his age. His long, straight black hair accurately framing his pale, smooth face.

\- You better...

\- Father, if you please, - Euan nodded at the door, unsure how much longer he could maintain his cool. - I’ll join you at dinner.

Crius felt humiliated. In a routine, all too familiar way. Euan did not enjoy doing that to him. But he was a fallible human being, prone to the occasional weakness of abusing his power. He watched his father get on his feet, relying heavily on the cane, and walk out the room. There was something in his posture suggesting that he would bow.

Him coming in was a pointless, painful and inaccurate cut, as peeling off the layer of dried blood off a healing wound, bearing questionable consolation only to Crius himself.

\- I won’t be getting out of Hogwarts before Christmas, - concluded Lien, with a tired, disappointed acceptance, rightfully anticipating Euan now willingly getting swamped with all sorts of paperwork, enough to keep him going well after Christmas.

\- Probably not, - confirmed Euan, and was quick to change the subject. - Here. From Ted.

Lestrange produced a little cardboard box with a light blue wrapping on Lien’s open palm. She lifted the lid to see two beautiful earrings, composed of three tiny baneberry leaves, shimmering with all the colors of the autumn.

\- Your mother was very clear about her stand on getting a piercing, - said Euan. - I transfigured them a little.

\- I wish things were different. - said Lien, hiding the box in the pocket of her shirt, with the parchment.

Euan pressed her harder to his chest and liened with his chin to her head. Inhaling the fresh, pleasant scent of her hair, and wondering how did he end up in his current position.

\- Jeg vett, - he said. - Unnskyld.

\- Stop, - asked Lien. - Stop apologising, damn it! 

\- Stop swearing, - smiled Euan and pulled Lien even tighter. - Stop failing classes, too.

\- H! - inhaled Lien with a faint smile, agreeing to do her best.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Norwegian insertions:  
> \- Jeg vett: I know  
> \- Unnskyld: Sorry
> 
> please, let me know if Zeno's paradox or math need more explanation :3 I am a math major and love talking about that sh*t


	5. August, 1973

On the other end of the British Isles, in London, Sirius Black smashed the head of a mildly protesting marble knight in between his soft, gentle fingers and raised it above the chequerboard.

\- Tell me, Reg, - he said, grinning with the kind of innocent, meaningless malice his younger brother was not yet able to understand. - is it only you, - he turned the knight around, pretending that he was still thinking. - or everyone in Slytherin is such a dumb idiot? - the semi-sentient piece of the metamorphic rock landed on a pale-orange square, cornering the more valuable semi-sentient piece of his opponent.

\- Sirius! - cried Regulus, half offended on that remark about his House, half excited to forward his pawn one more step and transform into a queen, not mindful of the fact that he was just about to lose the game. - C2 B1! - he ordered.

\- Moron, - snorted Sirius. He was bored with the predictable game of his brother - nothing compared to the challenges he faced with Remus or even James. He was almost anxious for the next night, when he would see Potter again and his most recent victory would be tested in another match or two.

The warm image of the fireplace of the common room of Gryffindor Tower curtained his inner sight. He could see himself and James battling over positions of inanimate wooden shapes Remus inherited from his muggle grandfather. He could even hear Peter squeak around, when his father’s deep, authoritarian and imposing voice cut through the soft, flavorus atmosphere of his vision.

\- Language, Sirius!

Sirius took a deep, long breath, careful as not to produce a single sound. Subtle cues as a sigh of frustration were never ignored by his parents, and he was not prepared to deal with the consequences. He reassuringly blinked at Regulus, anticipating how the wide smile on the little bastard’s face would wipe off in a few seconds, and kicked the dark rook off the board, replacing it with his own.

\- Wait, - Regulus protested, not appreciating his new queen and the army peacefully accepting their defeat. - I still could...

Sirius smiled at him and stretched, yawning. Part of him felt somewhat conscious to offer Regulus choose another move when he still had the chance, but his patience was exhausted weeks ago - Sirius had come to befriend people none of his family would appreciate, and had grown apart from Regulus in the process. He was now more often annoyed with his brother than wanted to tease him into joining a mischief like he used to, which Regulus had falsely interpreted as a good sign. 

Sirius stood up, running a hand throw his hair, heading to his room, before Reg would come up with another stupid idea - throwing in another chess game or chasing the snitch in the garden, for instance, and Orion - just by the virtue of his presence - would pressure him into agreeing. He threw a glance in the direction of his father, only to discover that more important problems were about to enter his hormone-driven, pubescent life.

Orion was seating in a sapphire blue armchair and did not appear interested in either one of his sons. Instead, his head was tilted towards the house elf, who was whispering something into his ear. Edges of the slit that was Kreacher’s mouth were twitching in a smile, betraying his excitement and happiness. For a second Sirius struggled to make the connection between increased expression of engagement on his otherwise quiet unemotional father’s face, earlier threats from his beloved mother to have Kreacher clean up his room and the literature Kreacher had in his hands at the very moment. Than the realisation hit him, and he was panicking, rolling over the table and breaking the chequerboard, throwing his lighter than the average body on Kreacher - scared more than would permit rational thinking.

The journals and posters Kreacher had put together and was now intending to present to his master, were knocked out his hand and scattered around the living room. It took Sirius another couple of seconds to understand that there was no point in fighting. For one thing, the damage has been done: his inappropriate possessions - including the female underwear catalogues targeted at his muggle peers in Idaho, were exposed. For another, the elf was bound not to fight back, which made fighting him a low affair.

\- Sirius, - called Orion, straightening up.

Sirius climbed up on his feet, leaving Kreacher to silently giggle, painfully aware of the stares in his direction. He felt stupid - both for being about to be scolded, and for letting it happen.

\- Come closer, - ordered Orion. Sirius did as he was told; very few in his position would have chosen otherwise. He raised his sight, looking around, unclear himself what to expect or to hope for. 

Regulus managed to pick up a sheet of paper with an inanimate photograph that had landed next to him - it was a woman in a tight yet somewhat ethereal looking dress with long sleeves and a short hem. Her blond hair were tied into a tail, and she was looking left of the photograph, waving to someone. The word VOGUE was written across the beach she was sitting at in unnatural bright colors. 

\- Dad, - he said, almost scared, standing up and approaching Orion. - She is not moving…

Sirius sniffed, letting go of the hope that Regulus would have the common sense to hide the picture of the beautiful Lauren Hutton for him. 

\- She is hardly supposed to, Reg, - hypothesised Orion after a quick glance on the picture. - I believe this is some sort of muggle rubbish, - he concluded with little doubt, turning towards Sirius.

\- Is she dead? - asked Regulus quietly, taking a sit at the sapphire sofa.

\- I, - Sirius could feel the weight of Orion’s glare, demanding a reasonable explanation to whatever Kreacher had told him. - Father…

There was a distinct point in time that separated him that could call his father _dad_ , with all the implied trust and affection, from him that could not. It was perhaps sometime during his first Christmas break, when he was coming home to tell the multitude of stories about his muggleborn classmates. He was excited to enlighten his parents, tell them all the cool things he had learned about muggles, only to discover that his parents were not exactly open-minded. In fact, his parents thought of the overall phenomenon as of their heir being lost to a bad influence.

\- Well, - he started again, watching beautiful Lauren Hutton escape Reg’s loose grip, get caught up in flames and float into the fireplace to burn out. - these are… uhm… Fashion journals. For… for school. I will be doing Muggle Studies this year, - he reminded defensively. - You said I could take Muggle Studies if I...

Orion was disappointed. Both on the unconvincing lie Sirius had came up with, and with him wasting his time on something as useless as Muggle Studies. There were no signs of him doing anywhere near an Outstanding in Astronomy at the time he was told he could take Muggle Studies if he got an Outstanding in Astronomy.

\- I know what I said, - interrupted Orion. Sharply, with a complete lack of an interest in hearing Sirius out. - Shall we try one more time. - He proposed, still maintaining his calmth. - What are these?

\- I just told you!

Sirius, encouraged by not being smashed into the wall for being in possession of muggle rubbish, was getting more entrepreneurial than was good for him. He longed his hand to grab the remaining literature that recollected itself on the table a second ago. 

Something struck him, cutting through his hand. Quick, like lightning.

Regulus gave a short scream and leaned forward. He was about to help his elder brother up, when his sight met with that of Orion, and he leaned back.

Sirius fell off his feet, blinded by the pain for an instant, biting on his lower lip to stay quiet and discreet. He could not help but to be impressed, almost jealous by his father’s strength and talent - he applied some sort of protection to the journals without even touching them or taking his wand out. It was during times like this when Sirius was regretful of not being the son his father would have wanted - of having lost the opportunity to ever learn from him.

\- At least we agree these are yours, - stated Orion, ignoring both Sirius handling himself rather well, and Regulus being a little too soft. 

Sirius stood up. He hated being judged, afraid to raise his sight from the floor, while Regulus sat on the comfortable sofa, next to their parents, all grown up and worried for him; being the problematic, the immature child. He was tired of explaining - over and over - that his mudblood friends and his muggle rubbish were just as good as the pureblood idiots he had to spend time with before going to Hogwarts.

\- Yes. - he said instead.

\- Sirius, - Orion had a deep, loud sigh. - Where did you get these from?

\- Different places, - shrugged Sirius. - Listen…

Sirius looked up. His father was smiling - in a reserved, judgemental and disappointed manner, his eyebrow slightly raised with a familiar expectation of a correction of a mistake, and he knew better than not to meet the expectation.

\- I don’t care what you do…

Sirius paused. He could assess that this was an improvement over the more confrontational imperative verb. Yet, Orion did not look pleased.

\- I don’t care what happens to these, - he nodded at the journals that were already steaming, bound to be destroyed. - I don’t care for dinner either. I am not hungry.

\- You’ll be in your room than, - suggested Orion, still smiling in the same manner - dismissively, with a confidence that everything will be exactly the way he intends them to. - Until we leave for Kings Cross Station?

\- Yes! - shouted Sirius, determined to convince himself - and perhaps even his little brother, that the happened was not a punishment, but his own free choice. 

On his way up the stairs, he picked a palm-sized skull from a piece of modern art and threw it at Kreacher, accurately on a protruding bone of his spine. 

* * *

Regulus stood still in the midst of his peers and elder students who were running around the 9 and ¾ Platform in great excitement and creating much noise that Regulus thought to be exhausting. This was a condition he was finding himself in more and more often - standing still and letting life flow by, and he was not certain how much satisfied he was by that. His mother was mercilessly pulling over his shirt and his hair, causing him considerable discomfort and some pain. He glanced at Sirius with an obvious envy - the older bastard had his shirt out of his trousers, his necktie let loose, his hair uncombed, and looked as confident as it gets. 

\- Mum, - he protested weakly. 

Walburga smiled, as a farmer assessing their potatoes, in an uncompromising, not at all reassuring, mildly threatening and practical way. Regulus had an acute awareness of all his classmates seeing him and of the contrast to his elder brother. He was jealous of Sirius, but could not bring himself to step aside as his mother slid her wand just above his curls, straightening them down. 

\- Beautiful. - said Walburga. She turned around with a clear intention of getting Sirius into shape as well - for the fourth time since morning. Part of Regulus hoped he would stand still as well, granting their highly irritable mother the satisfaction of altering his appearance as she saw fit; to feel better about himself, and to avoid a loud argument that would attract unnecessary attention.

Sirius grinned, holding no plans to cooperate. He caught Regulus’ sight and winked at him. His smile - open and welcoming, made Regulus feel a little lighter, reminded of now the distant time when his elder brother would guide him through something thrilling, exciting and inevitably impermissible to some degree. Sirius put a hand over his shoulder and dragged him closer, positioning him in between himself and Walburga, as a shield. His other hand slid through Regulus’ hair, messing them right back up.

\- You are welcome, - teased Sirius only loud enough for Regulus to hear him. Younger Black snorted, half grateful, half scared he would get punished instead of Sirius.

\- Sirius! - Walburga had her wand pointing at both of her sons, getting them rather nervous. - Come here at this very moment!

Sirius made a shy step towards his mother, still manipulating Regulus to protect himself from getting his shirt buttoned up and his hair brought into order. He spotted James Potter in the crowd, nodded an acknowledgement with a wide smile, and turned back to Walburga.

\- SIRIUS ORION BLACK!

It appeared to his mother that by stating his full name she was emphasising her authority. That, however, was not true; Sirius had no respect for her whatsoever, and, in result, did not feel slightest bit affected by anything she said, no matter how loud or intimidating she thought she was.

The tip of Walburga’s wand produced a red dot that was rapidly blowing up. Sirius had a sigh - it was not the worst curse he could expect - a little bubble that would leave him breathless for a few seconds, as if he was slapped, and perhaps make him feel like he had just walked out a bath - groomed and prepared to be showcased. It was an interesting and a complicated spell, and in other circumstances Sirius would have loved to study it - there was at least one fellow Slytherin student he believed might benefit from getting shot with it.

In the current circumstances he chose to push Regulus down, getting him off the range. Next was a lot like dodging a bludger, except without a bat. Sirius abruptly walked to a side, letting the bubble swing by and hit the wall. It was of paramount importance to him at the moment that his parents don’t get it their way.

\- You are an embarrassment to me! - hissed Walburga, approaching Sirius, her claw-like, tense hand longing to grab him. 

Sirius stepped aside from his younger brother, made a sharp cutting motion with his wand at his suitcase, whispering the name of the levitation charm, and was able to escape another spell shot in his direction. He was high - spotting more and more familiar faces in the crowd and seeing James wave at him with enthusiasm. 

\- Walburga. - Orion’s hand, covered in a white glove, lied on his wife’s wrist and directed it away from his son with a sense of ownership. - What is the point? He will mess himself up the moment he gets on the train.

\- Yes, sir! - confirmed Sirius, pleased with himself, his luggage floating right beside, still not following the potential of the situation to screw him over in long run. 

Orion turned to him with a mild surprise. Deep inside he had to admit that there was something about his elder son he could not understand and still found utterly charming, even when he was trembling in an excitement to rejoin his half-breed friends.

\- Enough of that, Sirius. - he said. His voice iron-cut, cold and as detached as it was possible for a human being. Part of him, Orion realised, was rather getting ahead of his wife doing something more severe about the matter - to his taste, there was already more than proportional friction in response to pointless rebellion towards fastening buttons or getting haircuts.

Sirius shrugged. Determined not to get himself into trouble in the last minute, he nodded, submitting to his father for an instant, and reached again for his younger brother. His hand dropped on Regulus’ shoulder; his wand drew another sharp cut, raising Regulus’ suitcase as well.

Orion - if looked at attentively enough - looked pleased. Despite the differences between him and his younger brother becoming more evident with each passing day, Sirius still had it in him to care for Regulus - in an immature, useless, but genuine manner. His relationship with his own sibling was disappointingly dull, and has always been such.

\- Let’s get you to your Snakehole, - Sirius smirked, messing up Regulus’ hair more than the later was comfortable with, and for some reason drugging him towards his own friends. - Shall we?

For good ten seconds Regulus struggled with Sirius’ quiet tight grip, further embarrassing both of their parents, until Sirius laughed it off and graciously let him free. 

\- Regulus.

The mere sound of Orion’s voice had both of his sons pinned to their location - safely and surely. Regulus pulled Sirius with him as he turned back to face their father, not noticing how Sirius’ soft arms clenched into fists, mildly shaking.

\- Do me proud this time, - Orion smiled at Regulus in a reserved manner, - son.

\- Yeah, Reg. - Sirius patted Regulus at the back, his attention focused on the reaction of their father. - Now that you are the family’s the only hope…

Orion was still smiling - the reservation and oppressed care giving hints of some crippled affection. Sirius was certain that what he just said was not ignored by him. He had listened, processed and did not confront him. Perhaps that split second Orion hesitated to slap his elder son, to tell him not to voice such opinions made the whole difference for him. That split second was all needed to understand that he was the failed project creators had given up and moved on. Perhaps not.

\- Sirius, - called Orion, as his son gave a wild, demonstrative twitch, dropping Regulus’ hand off his shoulder and advancing towards his blood traitor friend. Or the half breed one. Or the fat one. Orion was not sure and did not particularly care.

Sirius did not react. He was observing his shoes stepping over the grass growing through the cracks in stones. Concentrated on getting his face back to the excitement that was gone: he couldn’t bother much about the possibly pending chess game, or hearing about the stories of the wonderful vacation all of his roommates were going to throw at him.

\- When you hear me calling your name, - he suddenly felt his father’s hand on his shoulder, right where Regulus’ was a second ago, although far from being light enough to shrug off. - You respond. - informed Orion as a matter of fact, an old seasoned general refreshing the memory of a remarkably thick recruit. Sirius looked up, intimidated and scared. - Do we have an understanding? - Sirius nodded almost involuntarily. - I am glad.

Orion’s hand - wide, covered in a white silk glove and a dark sleeve, slid down to Sirius’ waist, in a protecting gesture, and he apparated to the other end of the platform, where it was a little more quiet. Sirius was confused and scared, further from what was familiar and what he has been craving the entire summer.

\- What your mother said is not true, Sirius, - said Orion, stepping aside, calm, without the usual air of superiority and with the same coldness and detachment nevertheless. - You are embarrassing us more often than is acceptable for someone of your age. I am not proud of things that you are doing, and I will see that you stop doing those things soon enough, but I am not ashamed of you. 

\- Yet, - mumbled Sirius, feeling a sharp need to ruin the increasingly sentimental moment.

His wandering sight landed on the outstanding figure of the Lestrange girl, standing alone just a few yards away from a dull mob of Slytherins and their parents, with an old, strained backpack twice her size, her necktie unironed and tied around her ankle, in jeans shorts and sandals, sucking on a lollipop and looking intently on the Hogwarts express. The breeze played with her long, light hair and hem of the white shirt that was clearly large on her. She pulled over the strap, accelerated faster than Sirius would think was possible and, approaching the train, threw her backpack inside an open window - right at flight. She then climbed up the seemingly perfectly vertical, smooth, red colored iron wall and disappeared inside the compartment through the same window - all as one continuous, effortless motion, and none of her companions seemed to realise that she was gone.

Sirius felt jealous that no one cared what she did and, on a less conscious level, jealous of her speed, impressed and intimidated by her unique, unusual beauty.

Orion took the moment of destruction to decide what to do. 

\- You are my son, - he concluded, pushing the sentimental moment for one more sentence. - Don’t give me more reasons for such conversations.

There was an odd, uncomfortable feeling Sirius walked away with - he was childishly, unreasonably, minutely happy to believe that his father had an interest in him beyond getting him aligned to his image of a Black. That was a happiness muddenning the water of the real, familiar happiness of the anticipation to meet James, and Remus, and Peter, and, hell with her, Lily Evans.

If Sirius was to look up before merging with the stream of underage wizards, he might have seen a faint silhouette of a crow, spiraling down to the compartment Lien disappeared in. If Orion was to look up, he would recognise the infamous patronus his own Hound had fallen to numerous times, back when they were young and believed in duells.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let me know what you think :3  
> do Orion or Regulus or Walburga (or Sirius ^_^") seem out of character?


	6. Pressured Promises

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a fateful conversation between two old friends,  
> one of whom believes in immediate action, the other is a reluctant theorizer  
> as they discuss deaths of their friends and how to proceed with the fight, history is being written  
> in a pencil  
> in the margins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one more mid-chapter addition  
> seems like there are more of them on the way

The wide, square shaped fingers of the large, hard-built wizard were illuminated by a lightbulb, floating a few inches above the table. His face was rough, with spots of what seemed to be healing sunburn, origins of which were rather unclear. He had a neat beard and a thick, purple scar, following the line of his mouth and cutting across it.

\- Rosalie is down, - he said, his voice exhausted and disappointed.

The atmosphere inside the fine institution of White Wyvern on Knockturn Alley was warm and numbing, ignoring of the information about Rosalie. Euan - the person for whom that information was meant, tightened his grip around the mug of now cold tea and raised it above the table, unable and unwilling to look at his collocutor.

\- Rosalie is down, - he echoed with no passion, as if restating the most neutral information - the color of his overcoat, the great taste of the tea, the weather that was finally clearing up. - How?

The wizard sitting across Euan had in front of himself a goblet full with steaming stout. He emptied it at once, and spit out another piece of information, somewhat connected to the rest of the conversation, with a bitter, crippled grimace.

\- She was... - he interrupted himself with a long, painful cough - a side effect from a curse he caught sometime in the recent past. - We haven’t found the body yet.

\- Rosie Fenwick, - smiled Euan with sadness and reservation, reminded of the stunning Hufflepuff chaser with who Algernon Longbottom - the wizard currently sitting in front of him and swallowing concerning amounts of alcohol, then Hufflepuff beater Liam Woodbeed and he himself were profoundly and irrationally in love with as careless teenagers. - Wood must be... upset.

Lestrange sipped from the mug, consumed with its taste, communicating - in as subtle and gentle manner as he still could, that he was not getting sentimental or agreeing to the deal Algie was pushing on him.

\- I am worried about him, Lestrange, - said the wizard with a sigh, opening up a space on the table for the bubbling beef stew being served. Rosalie Fenwick was not his first friend the war claimed; she was the one he lost the count on, the one that made reading death announcements in morning newspaper a routine procedure. - He will be going around getting himself into trouble.

\- Wood would do that, - sighed Euan with a hollow acceptance, as if commemorating Liam - who was still well and alive to the best of their knowledge, - putting his mug aside and watching Algie eat. He lifted a spoonful of his stew, with amorphic piece of beef. The once pleasant smell of boiled muscle hit Euan, drifting his thoughts onto the amusement of the contrast between his friend consuming flesh of an animal and trying to revoke his compassion and empathy.

\- Wood would, - nodded Algie, with a lifeless smile. - Little one, - he turned the conversation, his smile widening. Euan smiled too, a bit intimidated and nostalgic. Algernon Longbottom was a large man - not of the half-giant calibre, but large enough to stand out in most of the crowds. In comparison to Euan in particular, he was perhaps three times as wide in chest and at least a few inches taller, a qualification that made Lestrange the little one, for once and for the following twenty-six years. - So what do you say? - Algie took another gulp of his drink. - Do I count on you?

\- Listen, mate, - pulled Euan, unenthusiastic about answering that particular question. - I appreciate the effort of engaging me...

\- Cut the bullshit, Lestrange! - roared Algernon, attracting some undesired attention from other customers of the White Wyvern.

Euan leaned back, closing his eyes for an instant. He produced his wand, drew a beautiful, fast wave around himself, creating a sound isolating shield - it was better to be careful than hopeful.

\- No, - he said in a firm intonation, dreading the hope for a compromise. - I would not count on me, if I were you, Algie. I am not getting Norwegians into this. Or Germans. Or anyone. I am of the firm belief that a contained battle is measurably preferable to a battle that spreads.

\- If Voldemort wins, you little fool, - interrupted Longbottom, pushing now empty bowl away from himself with a frustration and leaning back as well. - it won’t be a battle spreading to your beloved Norway! It would be dementors, and hoards of Death Eaters, and...

\- Listen, - repeated Euan, emphasising the word, as if meaning that Algernon has been ignoring him so far. - First of all, there is no guarantee the Norwegians will side with the Order. Second of all, this won’t be solved by enlisting more people into the army you think has the right cause.

Longbottom raised his hand, as if longing to punch Euan; his inability to contradict Euan was frustrating and counter-productive.

He could digest the first argument - what the Order needed, after all, was not so much the support from the officials, as it were the Norwegian wizards - any wizards, really, firing up with a desire to fight against the potential tirant. The second argument was the one Lestrange was throwing at him often and has been throwing for a while - the situation is complex, unforgiving of an existence of a singular correct answer. Algie knew his answer was action, and he believed there to be no room for a second guess - not now, when the world was collapsing, and they could wake up to a morning of a new configuration, destroying everything they once knew and held dear.

\- Moody got his face cut in half, - informed Longbottom, with the same soreness and dread in his voice, as he had when telling about Rosalie. Rosalie was gone, he reminded himself. Understanding the meaning of that sentence as from scratch, feeling it as if this was the first person that was tangibly, personally gone - for a singular, negligible fraction of a second.

\- Which one? - asked Euan, straightening up. Algie smirked, detecting a faint interest, hoping this random piece of information would be of an influence on him.

\- The son. - Algie gestured to the passing gloomy waitress to refill his glass. - The father died last month. Never regained consciousness.

\- I see, - said Euan, grabbing a slice of cheese from the plate in the middle of their table and relaxing. He was not at all moved by the new information. What happened was that Death Eaters or their allies were powerful - combined, as well as on their own, and have crippled a legendary Auror pair, and that wasn’t enough to convince him that the only way forward was the way of violence and battle. - I still wouldn’t count on me. I do not see the point in getting on the way of wizards that defeated Moody. Unless…

\- Unless - what?! - interrupted Longbottom with confrontation, waving his fist at Euan.

\- Unless there is a plan, - replied Euan in a calm, plain intonation. - What you have been suggesting so far is quite similar to what I hear from my wife.

\- Bloody coward! - he shouted, although he could admit that not acting upon Jane Crabbe’s suggestions throughout fifteen years of marriage required Euan a descent bit of courage; and not doing so was still somewhat more than doing nothing.

\- I am not scared of them, mate, - said Euan with the same dispassionate, peaceful voice. Algie nodded, agreeing with a reservation: Lestrange feeling the need to state that out loud most probably meant that the assertion was not completely true. - I am scared for Lien.

Algernon Longbottom took a deep breath. He had hard time accepting his friend’s marriage in the first place, and had harder time accepting that their unnatural immitation of a union was rewarded by a good, strong child. He was not proud to admit that, but he could not help the pathetic, idiotic rage about Euan being a father - and being such a terrible one in his opinion, nor he could drawn it in any amounts of mandrake beer. It was a jealousy poisoning his subconscious at all times – if not fogging his mind itself, claiming a considerable fraction of his personhood.

He thought that among him, Liam and Euan he would be the first one to become a parent. Liam would be the second, and Euan would not. But he did, while his beautiful, wonderful Enid lost the gift of bearing a child to a Cruciatus of an experienced Death Eater when she was just eighteen. It was unfair that Rosalie was gone – perhaps pregnant, that Liam would never recover from it, and that Jane Crabbe got to become a mother.

\- I saw them in the morning, - said Algie, a bit surprised at realising that he had forgotten about that until just now. - In King’s Cross.

\- Uh-hm, - hummed Euan, recollecting that he was quite attached to his nephew and had most probably gone to King’s Cross station to see him off.

\- She will do alright, - continued Algernon with a conviction. Little were his interactions with Lien, he had observed her develop the strength to stand up against what she did not respect, a pattern of growth that assured Algie she will do alright.

\- I know, - nodded Euan, his face clouded with a faint expression of sadness. - I am scared for her all the same.

\- That explains why she was there alone, - snorted Longbottom, not even attempting to hide his judgement. - In the crowd of your lot.

\- Mate, - Euan looked at him, his sight expressing an entanglement of all sorts of emotions. Him letting Lien be on her own was a constant conflict he did not need a reminder about.

\- What? - cut Algie, his malicious, teasing smile widening. - I saw your pretty little bird, too, - he said. Euan straightened up, worried. He did not intend that to become public knowledge. - And I bet you a Nimbus so did our mutual blond friend.

There was a silence - one long enough to create a tension.

\- Lien asked me not to come with her. - said Lestrange, as if apologising.

\- So what? - countered Algie. In his opinion, the girl was just a child, and not all her wishes were to be honoured. In fact, his own nephew was not particularly delighted about being squeezed goodbye to the point of turning blue in front of all his friends either, but that hasn’t ever stopped Algie from coming to see him off.

\- Sometimes we push people away because we hope they will hold on to us tighter, - said Euan, his voice soft, oddly comforting and deep. He didn’t remember where he had heard that. He did feel the pain of that being true.

\- See! - roared Algernon with a wide, open grin and punched Euan in the shoulder, almost throwing him off the chair. - Smart ass.

Lestrange looked at his friend, a person he once thought he had the most profound connection to; someone he would not hesitate to share anything with. And here he was, weighing all the things bothering him that he wanted to share, deciding which was not important enough to give up. He could tell him that his daughter would not ride a broomstick since last summer, and that he had no clue what that was conditioned by. Or he could tell him that he was questioning whether education at Hogwarts was the best choice for her.

\- She might like you. - he told instead, longing for the glass half-full with beer.

\- What do you mean - might? - questioned Longbottom with a demand, grabbing his glass back and finishing it with one gulp. - You don’t drink, little one, remember?

Euan felt a sharp urge to do something out of spite, perhaps punch Algie, as if he meant it; and letting it go the same instant.

\- This student of mine, - he said, sniffing - vulnerable, about to tell something he had kept as a painful, itching secret. - Thompson, a very bright young man, a Cambridge graduate, works with Peruvian seismologists… You know, - he interrupted himself, realising that Algie did not care much about Peruvian seismologists or had a clear understanding of what a Cambridge graduate meant, - he spends time with Lien the way I cannot spend time with Lien… anymore. He races with her on expeditions, lets her sleep on him around a campfire, explains her his research or practices his eastern fighting art…

Euan stopped, breathing in. He was jealous, he realised - not that he did not notice that before, it was simply hearing it out loud, in words, that happened for the first time.

\- All I do is be worried, - he continued. - What if she gets herself to a trouble I can’t get her...

\- Fight then, Lestrange. - interrupted Algernon, his voice loud, serious and imperative. - Fight for a world where your brat can wander about without you wetting your pants.

Euan noticed his thumb rise with a slight tremor, forming what could seem an unnatural angle with respect to his hand. His lips curved in a crippled smile - reminded of how talented his wife was at the fine art of twisting one's fingers to meet peculiar requirements of peculiar spells. He registered that it was a rather odd response to the call for action he was exposed to.

\- That, of course, is a perfectly valid proposal...

He stopped, astonished to a degree. For a distinct, bright moment it was as if he was hearing someone he despised, disjoint from his own self - to a coward, a confused idiot, with no principles and no sense of where he was headed. Someone gifted at fishing for excuses and convincing themselves that those made sense. Someone that undeniably reminded him of Crius Lestrange, the last man he'd want himself to resemble.

\- Well, - he interrupted himself before Algie would.

The decisiveness Euan had felt with that short, almost inaudible exhalation was the same that the last time had wiped over him in 1952, the instant he opened his first inanimate textbook, an introduction to Geology, as if there was nothing wrong with doing so. His stomach jolted then, of course, in anticipation of the catastrophic punishments that were to be executed upon him, - over and over. But he read through, he made notes in a stolen Indian ballpen, with detailed illustrations and... Euan had been missing his teenage self, who, perhaps, was a person he could have been proud of.

He finished his tea and looked up from the table, in front of himself. His sight caught Algernon's purple scar, that reflected the light of the lamp, giving a slight glow. Euan thought that purple scars or missing limbs or Rosie Fenwick's disfigured body were not worth a lost cause, no matter how noble.

He could, however, see that at the moment his reason - an endless spiral of thoughts and guesses and doubts, was breaking, crushed under the weight of a simple, irrational, animalistic replacement he was - to his genuine surprise - more than content with. For a focal piece to his existence was his profound unwillingness to ever have his daughter find herself in a position where fight or sacrifice were imperative to her wellbeing. He wanted to protect her, and he was out of better options. Or so he thought.

Euan inhaled with a feeling of doom. The fear rose in him, bitting on him, screaming inside his head that he was hitting the point of no return.

\- I would expect the Order to have problems with a Lestrange signing up, - he said, palpitating, holding on to his uncertainties for just a little bit longer.

\- It is not that. - said Algernon, shaking his head, disappointed at Euan having such a shallow idea of the Order. - It’s cause you fled once.

Euan ran a hand through his hair. He was sure the Order was going to have problems with him for multiple reasons, doubts perhaps being the most prominent one of them. He, in fact, had no clue what he was doing not fleeing now, and thus did not blame others having no trust in him.

\- You don’t have to sign up... publicly, so to speak. - continued Algie and pushed the large plate with cheese and vegetables towards Euan, offering him to have a bite while the implications of that thought sank in.

It took Euan a second to understand and another to accept that the thought made perfect sense. He was not afraid, he realised. There was even some confidence that the enterprise would bear fruits worth all the consequences of the inevitable failure. There was also just a bit of bitterness he needed to spit out.

\- Has it ever occured to your fine bright mind, Longbottom, that you might be asking too much?

\- Oh, yeah, it has, - confirmed Algie with no hard feelings. - Has it occurred to yours that you are being a giant pile of dragondung?

\- Well, - said Lestrange, his intonation firm and simple. - I suppose I am. - His brat would, indeed, be much more and much happier in a world that needed a fight to be built. He had a sigh, with the relief that came with making a choice after the continuous agony of not being able to. - I am in.

\- Don't mess with me! - warned Longbottom, serious for the better part of the exclamation.

\- I won't admit you being right, though, - continued Euan, as if nothing has been said, with a little maliciousness. - Righteousness is a relativistic concept, - he added with pleasure, as if sipping in the flow of the sentence. Lien would have found it appealing as well, he thought, missing her.

\- Whatever, mate, - shrugged off Algie, pushing his cup from the edge of the table, his sight somewhat impaired from all the beverages he had consumed during the late dinner. He was tired, and now when the tension was gone, all he wanted was to get a good, long sleep.

He grabbed Euan’s mug that was refilled with now steaming hot mint tea.

\- To the end! - he shouted, smiling. That’s what Hufflepuffs were being made fun of for in 1969, when cheering with cups of pumpkin juice before their Quidditch matches. Euan smiled, too, watching Algie spill the tea all over himself.

\- I’ll apparate you home. - he said.


	7. Hogwarts, 1973

/* 

* MINOR EDITS TO THIS AND FOLLOWING CHAPTERS ARE PENDING

* THANKS!

*/

* * *

Leen sat in the most distant corner of the classroom, behind a group of Slytherin students. She was trying her very best to be left unnoticed. The school robes she had on felt very restraining after the past two months’ freedom to wear muggle clothes. And that was the second worst thing about her life, next to having to sit in the Potion’s class, first thing on Monday morning.

She touched her ears, carefully squeezing earrings Euan gifted her a few days prior to September. Three tiny baneberry leaves, shimmering with all the colors of the autumn, symbolizing her successful completion of both Herbology textbooks of the previous years and a few chapters of the coming one. Leen turned her sight back to the Professor Slughorn from a picture on the wall, having a deep sigh. Jane promised to cut off both her ears if she had the crudity to pierce them as a common muggle, preventing Euan from doing so. He compromised by transfiguring the hooks to magnets, so Leen could wear the earrings without demonstrating a muggle crudity.

\- As I was saying, my dear ladies and gentlemen, - she heard Professor talking, - your very first assignment for the year would be to brew a Shrinking Solution.

Leen looked up, leaving the baneberry leaves. The Professor had on a beautiful, dark-green suit with golden buttons, very likely tailored in very recent past, fitting him perfectly. He was shining with the kind of happiness that comes with a careless, luxurious life, and is taken for granted until something horrible happens. “I bet you didn’t spend the summer learning names of stupid plants” she thought resentfully, not paying lots of attention to what he was saying.

\- Sir, but the Quidditch tryouts are tomorrow afternoon!

“And I bet you don’t have to fix your Potions grade” she thought enviously, looking on James Potter’s wide back, who was the first to object. Of course the bloody bragger would be the first one to object. This was the thought on which Leen straightened up from lying on the desk, paying attention to what was happening in the classroom. Everyone appeared to be shouting something in ultimate dissatisfaction.

Leen felt embarrassed for not recognizing half of the words her classmates were throwing on Professor Slughorn, accusing him of not having explaining those or prepared them for brewing such a complicated potion yet. She nervously looked around, hoping to see someone just as lost as herself.

\- Now, now, - said Professor peacefully, - the assignment is not due until the end of the month.

This calmed down people a little. James Potter sat down, stretching his hands across the chair of his neighbor, and that seemed to shut all the Gryffindor students up.

\- We will break it to stages, - continued Professor Slughorn, smiling with an expectation of some support from the class, - shall we?

He turned to the blackboard and, discovering that his wand was left in the office, carefully took a piece of chalk with a napkin, and started scribing, feeling somewhat silly. He was moving heavily, evidently being uncomfortable with holding the chalk instead of controlling it with his wand.

\- Researching, submitting, revising and brewing, - he announced, and turned back to the students.

Leen quickly took one of her notebooks from her bag and copied it all down, feeling her anxiety increase with realisation that the first deadline would be just in two days. Not that having more time was going to change awfully a lot. 

\- And, - Slughorn put the chalk aside with an observable relief, - since some of your exam results were, frankly speaking, disastrous, - he made a pause, emphasising the statement he was about to make.

Leen felt herself biting on her lower lip. Professor was probably talking about her and her alone. She lowered her sight to the ground, avoiding a possible eye contact. Students to brew a potion so terrible to receive a zero were not coming by too often, after all.

\- I’d like you to pair up with a person, whose score, added to yours, wouldn’t exceed 150 points.

It took a second for James Potter to make the calculation and conclude that he will not be able to pair up with Lily Evans, since they both were at the top of the class, and to get sad. He dropped his arm from the chair, putting it around the shoulder of the boy sitting next to him.

\- I say let’s make a kick-ass Shrinking thing, huh, Peter? - he said loud enough for everyone to hear, yet discreetly enough that Professor Slughorn was able to dismiss it with an all-forgiving smile.

Peter Pettigrew giggled shyly, looking around in a not fully realized fear of competition. Most of the other students were looking around, too, calling each other’s names and forming pairs. No one looked upset about not having James Potter as a possible partner, and Peter calmed down, relaxing in his friend’s tight hug.

Leen Lestrange dropped her head on the desk, covering with the hoodie of the uniform. She hated herself for the relief she felt upon hearing that there is going to be a partner, placing all her hopes on whoever was going to be hers. She was a strong believer in one’s responsibility for one’s own fate, and didn’t ever work well as part of a group. Except when Euan or Ted took her on hikes with their colleagues, but that was a muggle thing and thus didn’t count. That was only a secondary concern, though, as first she had to find a partner willing to work with her.

Perhaps her forehead made a sound loud enough to attract attention when it came to contact with the wooden surface of the desk, as Professor decided to address her all of a sudden.

\- Ms. Lestrange.

Leen straightened up quickly, just in time to catch a piece of paper folded in a form of sphere by her head. Sirius Black, the launcher of the missile, was intending to make a statement about her forever alone status. Having lost the opportunity, he simply shrugged, and jumped over a desk to get to a lovely blond girl he was sure to brew a Shrinking Solution with.

\- It must be pleasing for you to learn that you alone would qualify to work with Mr. Snape.

Professor Slughorn smiled openly, trying to encourage Leen, make her feel welcome at his class, she absolutely and hopelessly had no talent in.

\- Yes, sir, - said Leen apologetically, crumpling the piece of paper.

As Slughorn turned to Severus Snape, his most favorite genius, Leen threw the paper ball back on Black, accurately on his nose. Content with herself, she gathered her belongings from the desk, as if nothing happened. A very muggle skill of hitting a target located to your right and back, without really seeing it, was one of the many she learned from Ted. He would patiently spend hours with her, helping her develop an awareness of her surroundings without necessarily perceiving them by her senses.

\- As I am sure you all have heard, my dear ladies and gentlemen, - said the Professor, unintentionally sweeping Leen’s nostalgic smile off her face, - Mr. Snape has submitted a written exam so brilliant, he was granted another fifty points on top of the complete score of one hundred, - he finished with a very pleased look on his round face.

Leen put down her name on the floating parchment next to a neatly written out “S. Snape”. Her own handwriting was sharp, quick, hardly legible. She looked at it for a second and slowly started to make her way to Severus, sitting alone on the front desk, since a fellow Slytherin student has left his side for their partner.

\- Why exactly don’t you start preparing right now? - exclaimed Professor Slughorn excitedly, as the parchment with all the names on it floated back to him.

Putting her bag on the floor, Leen attempted a greeting, but stopped before starting. Snape looked as uninterested in whatever was happening around him, as he could possibly be. Leen silently sat down, taking out her notebook from her bag again, just to have had done something. She felt an urge to put her head on the desk again, burying herself under the ropes, but tried to look as if the words she had written on the pages of her notebook had some significance. 

Snape’s dark eyes quickly skimmed through Leen’s stationery. She possessed an old copy of the textbook that had someone else’s initials on the cover, and she seemed to be using the same notebook for the both of the past years.

\- Don’t you buy new ones? - he asked with a mixture of judgement and disbelief.

Leen looked at him mildly surprised. Usually Potter and Black would be the ones to tease her for this particular aspect of her lifestyle. Hearing a comment about it from Severus Snape felt weird.

\- I don’t have any money, - she said quietly. Snape’s eyebrow slided up, not believing that. He shared a room with Rabastan Lestrange, and that brat seemed way more than just rich. - my parents do, - she explained. - I don’t want to waste what is not mine.

Severus nodded, satisfied with the reason and turned back to his own notes.

\- Snape, - said Leen, awkwardly trampling her pocket slits, - I am sorry you are stuck with me.

She didn’t hate herself any less for being paired up with the best Potions student in the school. The thought that he was probably going to do all the work by himself and achieve an Outstanding mark for both of them was not any comforting. She looked aside, not daring to look Severus into the eyes.

\- That’s alright, - he said calmly. His lips stretched up, rather imitating, that picturing a smile.

Snape’s thin, pale fingers pressed a piece of parchment and slided it to Leen. She noticed a fresh bruise on his wrist. Leen involuntarily longed to him, but hold herself back. Severus, probably having noticed that, pulled the sleeves of his robe down, hiding it.

\- Ask me if you don’t understand something, - he said colder.

Leen nodded a bit discouraged. The title of the paper read in shining red ink as “Shrinking Solution”. She started reading the long introductory passage, but Severus put his finger in the middle.

\- You can start here, - he directed, mildly annoyed.

Leen had a short, quiet sigh. Snape rightfully did not think she was going to understand or remember a single word from his description of the potion and the analysis of its effects. He pointed on the part where he just had the practical directions for brewing.

Leen read over those quickly. The recipe seemed simple enough, yet she was absolutely certain she would’ve messed it up. The numbers, though, were a relief. She could follow all the calculations, and subconsciously check them.

\- Is this number, - she showed on an integer indicating the amount of the required daisy roots in grams, - supposed to be the quotient of this two? - she asked, pointing on two other integers.

Severus looked at her with an interest, as on a kid that has just asked the most obvious question, that has been answered a thousand times. Leen was not really expecting an answer.

\- That’s not correct, - she said confidently.

\- Really? - asked Snape, more loud than he should have, standing up hastily.

The noize in the class faded. Leen looked around, confused in the first second why would everyone suddenly stare at her and Snape.

\- Go on, Lestrange, - cheerfully encouraged James, - tell Snivellus how stupid he is!

Couple of students around him laughed, appreciating the joke, Peter Pettigrew most enthusiastically of all. Someone shouted “Potter!”. Lily Evans, perhaps.

\- I am sorry, I didn’t mean the… - started Leen, looking back at the parchment, losing the confidence. - The math.

In summer, while working on her Herbology assignments in a classroom at Euan’s university, she was accompanied by his graduate and PhD students, some of whom would take time to explain her their research, or, whenever Euan was not there, ask to run over their math. More for fun than for actual use, really, but she was keen for any distraction whatsoever. And she did pick up some more muggle science.

\- Burn, Snivellus, - yapped Black, just as clueless about what the heck Leen was talking about, as any other wizard in the room that was not raised in a muggle household.

\- The what, Ms. Lestrange? - asked Professor Slughorn, approaching his young genius.

Leen raised her sight on Snape, as if apologising. She was regretting bringing this up. Severus, counter the expectation, was looking rather interested. He conjured the numbers on the Hogwarts Express, distracted by the noize of his housemates telling each other holiday stories. So, the math could have gone wrong.

\- The math, Professor, - he said impatiently, looking up to Slughorn. - The calculations.

Leen smiled unsurely, waiting for another comment from her fellow classmates or the Professor.

\- Please, Ms. Lestrange, - said he softly, taking out a fancy little device from his pocket.

A prototype of a Schitalka, one of his former students was working on with the Soviet team of magical engineers, meant to act a lot like the most rudimentary muggle calculator, was produced in limited edition and sent to him personally by that very former student. 

\- Nine divides this, - she pointed on eighty-one, the supposed divisor. - This, - Leen pointed on a long, nine-digit number, - is not even divisible by three.

Severus sat down, nodding with an acceptance. He did not know how to check the argument, but he could see how that would apply to the calculation being incorrect: their quotient could not have been a whole number. Leen opened the back of her notebook, copying down the nine-digit number and starting to divide it by eighty-one.

\- This is not even divisible by three, - echoed Sirius mockingly, still lacking the slightest clue of what Leen was talking about and mispronouncing the word “divisible” beyond any recognition.

The only reaction to that was an appreciating smirk from Potter and a demonstrative sigh from Rabastan Lestrange. Although, the later was rather an expression of his own feelings towards all the muggle concepts his disgraceful cousin uttered in front of all his friends, as opposed to encouraging Black’s teasing.

\- My dear boy, - said Professor Slughorn, finally managing to operate the device, - you were off by quiet a bit!

Leen put her quill down with a disappointment, as Slughorn dictated Severus the correct number. This was literally the very first thing she did correctly at the Potions class, and for a second she had a hope of finishing the division before the funny little Schitalka, to wrap it up on the most victorious note.

\- Well done, Ms. Lestrange, - said Professor Slughorn warmly, pat her on the back and walked away, certain this was the first and the last time the young Lestrange did something worth praising in his classroom.

As others went back to discussing the project with their pairs, letting the best student and his partner off the spot, Severus slid the parchment back to his side. Leen disorientedly watched his sharp, yet somehow smooth moves.

\- I am sorry, - she said, looking to a side.

Leen felt more irritated, than sorry. She has saved him some time by pointing out the mistake, and it was not at all her fault that the entire class had to hear that. Snape was not asking for an apology, or was offended for that matter. He took his paper out of the way, so he could ask a question himself.

\- How could have you possibly known that?!

Leen turned her sight to him, questioningly raising her eyebrow.

\- Right. - murmured Severus to himself, realizing he should be a little more specific, - could you explain to me how you knew that three hundred sixty-nine million four hundred eighty-six thousand five hundred and thirty-eight was not divisible by three so fast?

Leen blinked at him in awe couple of times, as he correctly pronounced the lengthy number by memory. Snape smirked shortly, proud to demonstrate that talent of his. Lestrange smiled, wrote down the number and broke it down to a sum of the products of appropriate numbers and powers of ten.

\- Let me know if I lose you somewhere, - said Leen, as she wrote. Severus nodded, following her closely.

The powers of ten were then broken down to sum of one and whatever string of nines was required to preserve the equality. Hundred, for example, was represented as one added ninety-nine.

\- I can factor out the three, - Leen dipped the quill into the ink, missing ballpens, - and I will be left with the sum of the digits of the original number, - she explained as she did it.

Snape was a bit puzzled, not yet able to connect what Leen was doing with what he has asked. He had to admit, it was a little strange to see Leen talking at all, let alone talking passionately and with confidence.

\- Now, if the sum of the digits is divisible by three, the number would be, - she concluded, inviting Snape to have a look on what she has scribbled so far, - I just checked that for the three million. 

Decoding her handwriting did require some effort, and she was using muggle notation, but Severus was not a complete stranger to muggle mathematics, so he made sense of it soon enough. He felt slightly intimidated by not knowing and applying such a simple thing earlier.

\- The exact same criteria would apply for 9, - he said, as if making up for it.

\- Yeah, - confirmed Leen, impressed and disappointed at the same time.

Euan had her figure the proof of the divisibility criteria on her own, and it took her more than a week. And she finally could make it only after Ted hinted her in the right direction. Well, she was also only eleven years old and way too excited to go to Hogwarts to care about muggle things she thought she was going to leave behind. 

Leen put her quill down and opened the notebook back on the page with notes on Potions, feeling as the instantaneous joy of being distracted by mathematics is leaving her. Snape could not help but to roll his eyes at the sight of her disorganised, useless notes on the matter.

\- I could explain you Potions, if you’d like, - he suggested, unwilling to say that he is grateful for her little session of enlightenment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~ let me know if the math needs any further explanation ^^"


	8. The Chocolate Chip Cookies

As the large clouds covered the sun of the twilight, Hogwarts sank in darkness. Leen Lestrange, succumbing to her beloved cousin and pretending inability to move, looked at the window with longing. She was hungry and regretful of having skipped the dinner. Most of all, Leen was impatient. She closed her eyes and yawned, waiting for her cousin and his wicked friend to get it over with.

Narcissa Black, a mediocre witch excited about an opportunity to aid an acquaintance in his educational endeavor, stood right next to her. She took her wand what seemed like from nowhere, in a gracious, elegant move.

Leen could not help but to admire her and feel mildly jealous, as her father had a similar graceful air about him, whereas she was practical, quick and clumsy. Reinforcing her admiration, Narcissa slowly moved her wand closer to Leen, enjoying its smooth motion up the white, fresh fabric of Leen’s shirt, right along the necktie.

Rabastan Lestrange, a bloody coward unable to complete a simple task of giving Leen a lesson he believed she has asked for without someone’s help, had her hands pressed to the dusty wall of the obscure corridor by her wrists, squeezing as hard as he could with his thin, weak arms. Like his elder brother, Rabastan was cruel and immature when it came to Leen in general and her unorthodox tendencies in particular.

\- Any more muggle talk from your gob, - he hissed angrily, leaning closer to her.

Observing Leen to look away, vainly trying to avoid Rabastan’s proximity, Narcissa laughed with a sense of victory. A gruesome, grotesque grin cut her otherwise quiet beautiful face. She didn’t seem to bother much about her appearance at the moment. This was only her second year in the school of Witchcraft and Wizardry, but it was the firmest of her intentions to prove that she had way less in common with Andromeda than her parents feared her to be, and the best way to do so she could see was to oppress the weird girl that happened to be born to a respectable family.

\- And you’ll regret it, - Rabastan promised.

As he got close enough for his nose to touch Leen’s cheek, she felt his uneven breath, sliding off her, and a strong desire to kick him, right in his slim, seemingly fragile chest. A realization of such a desire was sure to be fertile with consequences Leen was not intending to deal with, so she stood still. 

\- Shut up, Rabastan, - said she rather exhaustedly, lacking the envy one would expect her to demonstrate in a situation like this.

Leen moved her leg to a side a bit, bending the knee, getting herself to a more stable stance. Symbolic the power Rabastan thought he exercised over her through holding her hands was, it was not exactly pleasant. Younger Lestrange breathed in and abruptly pulled her right hand, easily liberating it from the pale, debilitant fingers. Her palm converged into a fist, striving to land on her beloved cousin’s jaw, when Narcissa twisted her wand, getting it to a better position.

\- Behave, Lestrange, - she said sweetly, pushing Leen away from Rabastan and back to the wall.

Leen took a deep breath. She could, in theory, knock the wand out of Narcissa’s hand prior to her casting a spell. There were two reasons doing so appeared to Leen as a bad idea. First, an action like that would be reported to her Head of the House and be classified as a violence disgracing a young witch, mildest of the penalties she could count on being a report to Euan. Second, even if she managed to push Rabastan away, the corridor they were in was a long one, providing her cousin and his friend with the time to strike back, potentially in a significantly more harmful way. Leen knew she would not be able to escape a charm shoot in her direction, and decided to comply further. Rabastan, unless accompanied by an elder student like Rodolphus or Lucius, usually only did the talking and was content by her giving a reluctant consent to do as they were asking.

She pulled her left hand just as easily, letting Rabastan to simply stand right in front of her, without exercising any more symbolic power over her. Narcissa, filled up with the happiness of unexpected success, raised the tip of her wand, sweeping the strand of Leen’s hair, covering her ear, to open up shimmering baneberry leaves. The youngest daughter of Black family giggled, covering the decorative piece of ceramics with her fingers.

\- Nice, - she assessed genuinely, as if touching it gave her some new information, sliding the wand back to Leen’s throat.

Rabastan straightened up. His hands, just as Leen’s back and arms, were in dust. He glared at Leen for a second, as if blaming her for the condition he was in, and took his wand from the pocket of his new, expensive robes. He pointed it on his hand, closed his eyes for a better concentration and whispered the spell. With a gentle hot air, hardly having touched his skin, the dust vanished. Following the same procedure with his other hand, Rabastan opened his eyes and looked over his pale, shining clean hands.

Leen glared back at him, still patiently waiting for Narcissa to let go off her earring and Rabastan to announce the end of his enterprise. However, unlike Leen, he was not in a hurry. He put the wand carefully back in his pocket and took a thick roll of fresh, snow white parchment. It was a pity to hand it over to Leen, who wouldn’t appreciate its quality, but the parchment was not meant to stay blank.

\- I’d also like you to hand in my Astronomy homework, - Rabastan informed with a charming smile.

Leen took the roll in a careless manner, not even bothering to look up at him. She stepped aside, hopping this was going to be the end of it, when Narcissa made the mistake of taking off the baneberry leaves. A decision was made in an instant, and Leen squeezed Narcissa’s wrist to make her release the wand even before she felt the determination herself.

Eleven inch long, oak wand with a phoenix core and a peculiar handle hit the stones on the ground. Watching it roll around, Narcissa screamed shortly more from surprise than pain. Leen smiled, enjoying her control over the situation, even if only for a fraction of a second. She grabbed her earring from Narcissa’s open palm before Rabastan could catch up with the most recent events or react.

\- Good evening.

The familiar voice belonged to Arthur Weasley, a 7th year student and a prefect. He never really spoke angrily or loudly, but something about his calmness made him a respected authority, and Rabastan, as he summoned Narcissa’s wand with his own, found himself slightly worried.

Accepting her weapon, Black screamed again, reinforcing her image of a victim. Leen did not seem to bother awfully a lot about that. Her mind was occupied with the missing magnit bit, an essential component to wearing the earring.

\- The savage attacked me! - she heard Narcissa exclaiming. It took Narcissa a moment to wipe out the happy grimace off her face, and look in the direction of approaching footsteps with a helpless expression.

\- Save me, - Leen whispered mockingly. And the resemblance between her reaction to that of Black moron to what they considered unworthy and did not understand, slipped her attention.

Arthur Weasley stopped as he reached the students he thought needed someone to interfere in the activity they were engaged in. His serious dark blue eyes looked at Leen with interest and empathy. It was in a way a funny scene, with her stuffing the parchment into the pocket of her robes, too small to contain it, and holding an earring in between her fingers.

\- Leen, - he said after a silence, gathering from the previous experience that she was not going to say anything in her defense unless asked to.

She straightened up, leaving the parchment stuck half-way through and quickly dropping the baneberry leaves into the safety of the pocket of her skirt.

\- They… - Leen stopped, looking for the right word to describe of what has triggered her savage attack. Unable to find it, and convinced that there was no way she was going to exclaim an accusation instead of a reasonable explanation like Narcissa she had no respect for did, lowered her sight. - I am sorry, Weasley. 

Rabastan Lestrange breathed in with a relief. Beside being a respected authority, Arthur Weasley had an actual power to give him a detention and was pretty much the only prefect to be likely to believe Leen over him. 

\- Yes, Weasley, - he agreed quickly, - you should see your housemate disciplined.

Arthur Weasley had a deep sigh. The year just started, but this was already the fourth of his housemates to be caught while violating a rule or two, first three being the anticipated Potter, Black and Pettigrew.

\- Five points off Gryffindor, - he declared calmly. 

Leen did not look anyhow affected, as she happened to be completely uninterested in the fate of the House Cup, as well as her role in its final destination. She was still tensed, expecting a detention or an imposing invitation for a lecture, but Arthur did not think she was to be punished. In fact, he believed that Leen did not start a fight without a reason. He was merely disappointed, as he was hoping she would trust him enough to tell what has happened.

\- I would imagine you have other things to do, - he stated, turning around and walking away.

Leen run after him for two reasons. First, although she would derive certain pleasure from hanging around her cousin and his friend, possibly hurting them back, that would not have been a pleasure worth of consequences, and running under a prefect’s protection was the best way to get away from them. Secondly, the watch hanging from Arthur Weasley’s waistcoat indicated that the time was seven sixteen, precisely a minute past the time Severus Snape has offered to meet her in the library.

It took her another two minutes to get to the library and find Snape, sitting with Lily Evans. They appeared to be very much into whatever he was writing on a piece of parchment. Leen stopped in a few yards from them, trying to catch her breath. She approached them hesitantly, not sure anymore whether this was a good idea. Severus did not mention he was going to have a company this evening, and becoming part of a bloody study group was not Leen’s intention at all.

As Lestrange stood just behind Snape, waiting for him or his friend to notice her, Lily raised her beautiful green eyes on her.

\- Hey! - she greeted, - something up?

Leen simply nodded, confirming that she was standing there with a certain purpose and that something was up. Evans was always way too talkative and open for her. Two years of sharing a room did not prove enough for Lily to give up on trying to engage with Leen in any sort of communication, and Leen was as repelling of her attempts as it gets.

Severus put the quill down and turned to Leen. That did require certain effort, as the space between himself and heavy oak table was not wide enough.

\- Evening, Lestrange.

In response, Leen nodded again, feeling increasingly less confident. She put her bag on the table, just next to the piled up textbooks and, before Severus could pull the chair next to him back, offering Leen a sit, she put her hand on the top rail of it. She squeezed it with pleasant anticipation of pressure in her arm and, pressing her other hand on the table, pulled herself up. Leen Lestrange never would miss a chance to exercise.

There were at least three possibilities of a complication. The chair could have slided away, dropping her on the floor. She could have not managed to place her legs in the space between the chair and Severus, kicking him. Or, she may have simply not have had enough force in her arms to complete the trick. But, considering her vast experience of making it through far more challenging obstacles in mountains, fields and caves, those possibilities were rather negligible, and in an instant Leen found herself sitting in the chair, facing Severus Snape, who blinked a few times in an awe.

Lily was looking at Leen with a little judgement, unapproving of such an unconventional method of completion of a simple action. Leen didn’t seem to bother. She was used to the look, as Lily was used to her appearing in the least expected places and transporting herself over things in a similar manner.

\- I will be helping Lestrange with Potions, - Snape told in a patronising intonation, watching for Lily’s reaction.

Perhaps, he did not realize it himself, but he was showing off in front of Evans. In fact, he deliberately chose the time such that Lily would meet Leen and get the chance to learn about his generous enterprise. That made Leen feel sad and disappointed. Her concept of friendship assumed an equal exchange of knowledge and experience, without the air of one’s superiority over the other. And for the first time, she was under the impression that a connection, resembling and consequently growing into friendship, was going to be established for her in Hogwarts.

\- That’s great! - exclaimed Lily, feeling a responsibility she for some reason assumed to be hers roll off her shoulders. - I’ll get going than.

Evans stood up, gathering her belongings in a neat pile with a simple swing of her wand. Leen, as she took her notebook with the quill and ink jar from the bag, accidentally ripping off the zipper, smiled apologetically, admiring Lily’s ability to deal with things so nicely. Severus smirked quietly, debating whether he should offer his help with fixing the damage or not.

\- See you later in the room, Leen! - said Lily, throwing her pastel purple, covered in flowers and butterflies, muggle-made bag over her shoulder. - Good night, Sev, - she turned to Snape and, grabbing one of the chocolate chip cookies her mother has baked just before she left for Hogwarts, walked away.

\- Night,- replied Severus.

He took a cookie himself, grateful for Lily's decision to share part of her supplies with him, and looked critically on Leen’s notebook, with multiple pages ripped off, spots of ink and water all over it. She had a few bullet points, listing the ingredients for the Shrinking Solution from the textbook, grouped without any apparent logic.

\- We are going to submit whatever you come up with, - said Severus, calmly, as stating a matter of fact, - I disposed of the paper I showed you earlier.

Leen looked up to him. It sounded fair and even reasonable. Snape, even if he was to fail one assignment because of her, could easily make up for it in the coming ones. She, on the other hand, almost physically felt how the only chance she could count on of fixing her life slipped through her fingers and an anxiety wash her over. The situation was not as dramatic and hopeless as Leen was picturing, yet, she was severely concerned for her academic future.

\- When did you write it? - she asked in an attempt to push the conversation further.

\- This August, - replied Severus, carefully folding the piece of parchment he was writing on for Lily. 

It was explaining the divisibility criteria of three, nine and eleven, last one apparently being figured out by Severus himself. He was using strange notations, not very much like to the muggle ones Leen was used to. It oddly hurt her to see that.

\- Where did you learn... -Severus finished the cookie, looking for the right word, - mathematics?

As Hogwarts students were only taught some spells at Potions or Astronomy to perform necessary calculations, similar to the way muggle children could have been taught to use a calculator, without learning elementary Algebra, in the setting of a magical library the word sounded rather foreign and out of the context.

\- My father taught me, - replied Leen, smiling.

\- Your father, - echoed Severus in disbelief, perhaps more loud than he should have.

\- He is a Geology professor at a muggle university, - continued Leen with some sense of pride.

\- Your father, - repeated Severus again, this time whispering, in a greater confusion and disbelief. Leen nodded, smiling. - Isn’t he, you know, a Lestrange?

\- Being a pureblood wizard and studying a natural science are not mutually exclusive, - said she, restating an argument she heard Euan say numerous times.

Severus was confused beyond the state in which he still could formulate a useful inquiry. His whole perception of the wizarding world, as accessed through his fellow Slytherin students, mostly future Death Eaters, was confronted with a conundrum. 

Leen’s hands involuntarily longed to her ear that was missing the baneberry leaves, trampling it nervously. She saw the clock on the opposite wall, floating right above a group of Gryffindor students, indicating that the time was already half past seven, knocking her back into an anxiety about Potions.

\- Will you at least help me to write the paper? - she asked quietly, looking back on her useless scribble.

\- I guess, - said Snape, enjoying her dependency over him, the way she was counting on him.

He longed for the blank parchment designated for Rabastan’s Astronomy homework, stuffed forcefully into Leen’s pocket. Exactly the instant Severus was able to touch the parchment and lift it, Leen had her wide, veiny palm on his wrist, accurately covering the bruises. She responded on a subconscious level, and Severus realized two things. First, their relationship was quiet far from the stage where he would have had the freedom to operate with the items in her possession. He did not know Leen nearly as well as he knew Lily, and that obvious fact made him feel a little stupid. Secondly, he has involuntarily closed his eyes, as the awakened soft pain in his hand was unexpected and has revoked certain memories. 

Leen took her hand off first. She did not think she owed him an apology, but she did feel sorry for hurting him. She could not help but to glare at clear handprint on Snape’s arm. Following her sight, Severus took his hand off the parchment and violently pulled down the sleeve, trying to hide the bruises.

\- May I ask what has happened? - asked Lestrange, trying to catch his sight.

\- My father happened, - answered Severus with a quiet sigh, looking straight on his notebook, preventing Leen from catching his sight.

The sharp contrast between Lestrange lightening up upon mentioning her father and the almost physical dread he felt upon having to mention his, painfully cut through his mind.

\- Just as some wizards despise muggles, some muggles despise wizards, - he said quickly, somehow making it sound funny, and smiled himself. In an unhappy way. - Even if the wizard is their son.

Leen was slightly puzzled with this bit of information about the world. She knew many muggles, but it has only now come to her attention that none of them were aware of her magical capabilities, and that there was indeed a chance of them changing their attitude upon learning.

\- I shouldn’t have asked, - she said unwillingly.

The truth was Lestrange was about to discover a new person, and with him an entire point of view, conditioned not only by the fact of his unquestionable uniqueness as a human being, but also by the fact that he was providing her with an insight to a part of the world she until this moment did not even realized existed. A momentary excitement waved through her, similar to what she has experienced in her journeys alone or with muggles, only to be immediately shut.

\- That’s alright.

Severus felt grateful both for an opportunity to say out loud something that has been bothering him for as long as he could remember himself and for Leen not pushing it any further. Faintly sensing some new established connection between himself and her, Snape smirked.

He grabbed the parchment and put it in front of Leen, covering her notebook. He wanted to get the thread away from his father and whatever he has had to endure during the summer. Lestrange smiled shortly, forgiving him the intrusion into her personal space. This and all the following ones.

\- The second book from the top, the very first chapter, - Snape directed calmly.

Leen slowly took the book without deconstructing the pile, and opened it on the first page. Long, pale finger of her classmate landed on the last paragraph, emphasising the subtitle that read as the Drink of Belittlement.

\- This is the easiest recipe doing the job I could find, - he said. - Coincidentally, it is also the most ancient one.

\- I could see that, - assured Leen, gently touching the soft, dirty fabric that once covered the book, now hanging from the edges. Leen looked back at Snape, smiling openly, demonstrating her gratitude.

\- I’d start by reading through this, - said Severus, grabbing another cookie. - You don’t want any? - he asked, sliding the metallic box to Leen. She nodded, carelessly took one and had a bite.

More than two hours were spent in frustrating attempts to comprehend unknown terms and concepts of Potions. Lestrange had to ask Severus to explain her something once every few minutes, which oddly did not feel embarrassing. He was very patient with her and had a talent of articulating his thoughts in a simple, yet complete way.

As the Librarian shoot a yellow sparkling charm through the corridors, indicating the proximity of the curfew time and the closing of her territory for the night, Snape shut his Arithmancy textbook. Giving it a second’s thought, he also made the choice of closing the book lying open in front of Leen.

She raised her head, sleepily rubbing her eyes. The parchment was only half covered in her tiny, hardly legible handwriting, and was more or less ready to be submitted in a day. A beautiful fact, wrapping her up in pleasant anticipation of a good night’s sleep with resting conscience. Severus skimmed through the paper, nodding to himself.

\- You are doing well, - he assessed in the patronising intonation Leen disliked.

She carelessly folded the paper and dropped it into her bag lying on the floor. Severus, with a neat swing of his wand putting all his belongings into his bag, just as old and worn out as that of Leen, broke the last cookie precisely in half.

\- I think you can manage the rest on your own. - he said, longing one of the halves to Leen. She nodded in agreement, accepting the food.

\- Thanks, - she said. - I guess.

Leen wanted to say that she’d like to return the favor by means of possibly helping Severus with the Defense Against Dark Arts or Astronomy, subjects that came to her as easily and naturally as Potions came to him, but hold back for reasons unclear to her.

\- You are most certainly welcome, - replied Severus with a forgiving smirk. - See you in the morning, Lestrange.


	9. The Forging

Leen navigated through the clusters of her housemates quickly and quietly. The Common Room of Gryffindor Tower was as always full of people studying or simply spending time together, and as an inevitable consequence, creating much noise. A feature that has always held Leen away from the place.

Reaching the staircase leading to her corridor, Leen pulled herself up and over the handrail. The technique was not exactly perfect. She was out of balance when she landed and almost fell, dropping the bag on the floor and ripping the fabric of her robe near the elbow. The height was reasonably challenging, but the thought that the muggle Ted, spending most of his time investigating volcanic granites, would have made it easily and beautifully left Leen more on the motivated than the satisfied side, which was not a bad thing in and off itself.

\- Ever heard of stairs, Lestrange?

A short laughter passed over the sofa, where Marauders resided at the moment, fading away almost as soon as it started. Every time Leen's decision to overcome a physical obstacle in the least conventional way possible was witnessed by either Sirius Black or James Potter, they considered it to be their duty to somehow comment and make fun of it. Another feature of the Common Room that Leen found rather unappealing.

Standing up, she had a deep sigh. Upon recognising the voice of this particular commentator, Leen caught herself on feeling some warmth deep inside. A pleasant, inexplicable longing to turn around and converse, explain to the moron and his moron friends why she found it important and enjoyable to climb over things without an apparent necessity struck her for a second, only to leave her immediately.

\- Your trousers are unzipped, Black, - she chose to say, lacking the slightest clue of whether the statement was correct or not.

Leen picked up her bag from the floor and walked towards her room, glad that ancient charms protecting girls against boys would prevent Sirius from following her and hopeful that he was checking his pants like an idiot he was and being made fun of by Potter or Pettigrew, even though she knew that he wouldn’t be slow to traverse any joke.

Sirius barked loudly in an attempt to ridicule the last remark, knowing Lestrange was not going to hear him. He too found himself oddly interested in a genuine conversation with her, and, unwilling to let that interest to grow into a motivation to act, had to do something to distract himself. James pat him on the back with all the might of a thirteen year old chaser. Sirius smiled, barked loudly again, this time as a reaction to the prefect's shush, and returned to working on his first ever assignment of the Muggle Studies, forgetting about Lestrange until the next time he had to see her.

Leen caught the nametag floating in front of the door in between her two fingers. A carefully laminated piece of bright orange parchment, tastefully decorated with a picture of ripe melon, autumn colored leaves and an attempted portrait of herself, baring her name written out in dull red ink and an elegant handwriting was most certainly a product made by Lily Evans. Leen released it, unsure how to feel about that, and gently knocked on the door. She always knocked before entering, except when she was planning to enter a tent, as knocking on a thin waterproof fabric was a hard, often an impossible task and the conception of privacy seemed to get rather distorted on a camp.

Leen opened the door and walked in without waiting for an answer. She was more of warning about her coming in than asking a permission, and Lily didn't mind that anymore. She was lying in her bed, carefully holding a flame exhaling book about Puerto Rican dragons that seemed to scare her and, as a consequence, possess her undivided attention.

Leen breathed in, approached her roommate and put the metallic box left from the chocolate chip cookies on her stand. It hit the old, cracked wood with a quiet, dull sound, attracting Lily's attention.

\- Thanks, - said she hardly comprehensibly and indifferently, looking up to Leen for a fraction of a second and turning back to the book.

Leen nodded, unsure why Lily would be thanking her, and took a step back, watching her to struggle awkwardly with the book. She has been trying to figure out the right way to go about it for the last two hours, since she left Leen and Severus in the library.

Having grown up in a wizarding household, Lestrange knew exactly how to go about a flame exhaling book. One could use a fairly simple spell to transfigure the fire into relatively harmless smoke, compromising the joy of breathing clean air. Or one could dip it into water, compromising the near new condition of the book. There was also a third, less common and secure way, not compromising anything at all if performed successfully, Leen was intending to pursue.

\- Would you like me to handle that for you?

She didn’t like it when someone offered her their help, and she liked it even less when she had to admit her own weakness and accept it. Thus, an ethical maxim would suggest that she does not consciously put others in a position she would not enjoy very much herself. However, it seemed to be a general rule that Lily differed from her in every single aspect of their characters and that she would appreciate a guidance in this particular situation.

\- Could you? - hopefully asked Evans, looking up to Leen again. If she have had the guts to sneak out the Gryffindor Tower at night and find him, she would have asked Severus to fix the issue for her. If she didn’t think Leen will meet that with dismissive silence, she would have asked Leen for help herself.

Leen swept a strand of her hair off her forehead and took out her wand.

\- Wingardium Leviosa.

The book floated, rising just above Lily's head, and followed the motion of Leen's wand to the window, away from any material that could have caught fire. Leen closed her eyes and took a deep breath, as she has never actually dealt with fire conjuring books on her own, only has watched her father to. She made a sharp, cutting motion with her wand, dragging the book up to the ceiling and down to the floor. The flames suddenly grew bigger, encompassing the entire book and threatening to burn the walls or the carpet.

\- Brilliant, - assessed Lily, progressively having harder time in believing that Leen knew what she was doing.

The fire soon turned into black, cough inducing smoke, spreading all around the room. Somewhere in the background of her tired, sleepy mind it occurred to Leen that assuring Evans of a plausible end to her enterprise might be a good idea. Exactly as she anticipated, the smoke disappeared in a few seconds, and Leen opened her eyes.

The book, exhausted now and thus likely unable to breathe fire on its reader for next couple of weeks, floated back to Lily. She grabbed it as soon as it reached her, opening on a page of the first chapter, with a photograph of a light green dragon flying in the sky of sunrise. The book felt warm and smelled as a burning parchment would.

\- Thanks, - smiled Evans.

Leen silently nodded in response, opening the window with a swing of her wand. A cold wind drafted into the room, playing with the smoke and drugging it out. Leen approached her own bed, dropped the wand on the blanket, her bag on the floor, next to the still unpacked suitcase and, carefully placing the earring from her pocket to the drawer, got undressed and wrapped up in a towel.

Lily, consumed with her reading, dove under her sheets. As Leen walked out the bathroom, in a fresh, clean pajama and trampling her short, dark hair with the towel, she was just putting aside the book. Getting under her thick, warm blanket and throwing the towel accurately into her yet empty wardrobe, Leen decided to initiate a conversation.

\- Evans, - she started, - your parents are muggles, right?

Lily swung her wand, turning the light off. She had mixed feelings about the question. It meant her roommate she was very excited to get to know at first has finally reciprocated her interest by posing a question about her family. On the other hand, the experience was that every time a pureblood wizard asked her about her family, a pureblood wizard was going to say or do something mean, intentionally or ignorantly.

\- They are, - she confirmed with a caution.

\- Were they, - Leen stopped, looking for the right adjective, - were they happy, when they learned that you are a witch?

\- They were, - answered Lily with even more caution, not seeing where Leen was going with that. - They were also very proud, - she added.

Leen rolled over, thinking how to form her next question. Having learned that Snape's father despised him because of him being a wizard, she could not help to think that that would be the case for all muggles, including Ted. Hence, she wanted to learn more about her muggleborn roommate's family, gain a better understanding of muggle's perception of her world and a nicer example to identify Ted with.

\- What about yours? - suddenly asked Evans, partially as a defensive attack, partially as an attempt to get Leen to talk about her parents.

\- They sort of always suspected their child was to be a witch, - she answered somewhat sarcastically, raising a little above her pillow and looking for Lily in the darkness. - I couldn't tell if they were particularly happy or proud of me when I conjured magic for the first time and verified the guess, as I was too small to remember a thing.

Leen laid back, regretting not closing the window before getting in the bed as well as having initiated the conversation. It was hard for her to talk with Lily, not so much due to having lost the time when it would have been appropriate to ask the basic questions, or due to being cold to her for the two years they knew each other, as due to the location they were communicating in. For some reason the school of Witchcraft and Wizardry shut Leen down.

Perhaps, a significant part of the blame for that were holding her cousins and some other Slytherin students, harassing Leen all they could. First few months Sirius Black shared her fate as the other rebel sorted into the wrong House. Unlike her, Sirius Black soon acquired friends that helped him to stand up to them and did not enclose in himself.

\- My parents didn't believe it until I received the letter from Hogwarts, - informed Lily after a short silence, resuming the conversation. - I think my sister was quiet jealous of me.

\- Why would she be jealous?

\- You know, cause I was a witch and she was not, - she did not mean to sound harsh. - Also cause my mother made a strawberry cake for me, and she never makes a strawberry cake unless there is a special occasion.

Leen laughed. She had a soft, contagious laugh and Lily laughed with her, finding the sentence funny, too. Finding the premise that being a witch was an advantage upon not being one intriguing, Leen thought she should say something in exchange.

\- My mother never cooks, except for healing potions that usually have an awful taste, - she smiled to the dark ceiling with a thin strip of light coming from an unknown source. - But she is said to cook them very well, - she added, as if making up.

\- We call that medicine, - said Lily for the lack of a better reply and an aspiration to continue the communication. - And they make them in factories, thousand at a time.

Leen knew that. Rather abstractly, of course, and could not care less about it at the moment. She turned to where Lily was supposed to be, having decided that the direct articulation of her main inquiry is the best she is going to get.

\- Do you think there are muggles that would hate wizards if they knew we exist?

\- I sure know one, - answered Lily rapidly, thinking of her elder sister.

\- Why?

\- Why do I know one? - Lily teased.

\- No, - Leen relaxed, turning her sight back to the ceiling. - Sorry. I meant why would the muggle you have in mind hate wizards?

\- Because wizards are different, I guess, - Lily hugged her teddy bear, yawning. - Maybe because wizards are more powerful than muggles. - She rolled, lying on her side. - Why do you ask?

\- Just... - Leen closed her eyes. - No reason. - she lied. - Good night, Evans.

\- Night, - Lily breathed in the air, flavoring the coming night's sleep. - We should talk more, - she announced. - And you should call me by my name.

\- All... allright, - Leen agreed hesitantly. She did anticipate the risk of Lily taking her initiating a conversation a little too enthusiastically, but she already had her hopes up that it was not going to be the case, when it turned out to be.

\- You see, - Lily went on, ignoring the uncertainty in Leen's voice, - my father and my mother are Evans, and my sister is Evans, and my uncle... But I am the only Lily.

Leen did not agree with the statement, as she was very sure there were plenty of Lilies in the world. But she did not think it was worth arguing against.

* * *

On the next Tuesday, immediately after the last class of the day was dismissed, Severus gathered his belongings and stood up, approaching Leen. Earlier in the day he had their paper back from Professor Slughorn with an overall positive feedback, but also with lots of suggestions of improvement and expansion, requiring more work. It was his impression that Leen looked a bit worried, and it was his guess that she was afraid that the paper was a disaster, was unwilling to put up the required work and thus has been avoiding him.

The truth was that Leen was worried due to a different reason. Today was also the day third year students have learned the results of their Astronomy assignment, and Rabastan, up until and including this afternoon being under the pleasant ignorance about his predetermined failure on it, conditioned by Leen's choice not to write his homework for him, has finally become aware of it. As his belief was that his cousin did not fail to submit the homework instead of him, the most direct implication of his disillusionment was him seeking out a revenge. Leen looked at him for a second, dumped her textbook into her bag, grabbed it from the floor and ran out the classroom as fast as she could.

Leen was a decent runner. Rabastan, however, had less distance to cover and cut his way through people with better success. Just half a yard away from the staircase leading to the prefect's bathroom no one else was likely to use in near future, he caught up with her. Took the thick, rough fabric of her robe , pulling her back.

Turning around, Leen had a deep sigh. She knew she could walk away, which would perhaps involve hitting her angry cousin. She could also let him shout out his rage, voice a few threats and leave her be for a while, which would not involve hitting at all.

\- What do you think you are doing?!

Leen felt inclined to follow the path of the least resistance. As a current. A stream of what a smart muggle once called electrons, flowing in a pipe of rubber through copper strings, empowering light bulbs. It has been less than two weeks she talked with her father or his PhD student, and she has been missing both of them very much.

Dark, almond-shaped eyes unaware of the background sentiments Leen was experiencing at the moment were looking at her with a mixture of disbelief and cruelty. Rabastan came closer to her, mastering all his self control not to take out his wand and perform a jinx. Leen looked to a side, also having a hard time with respecting Rabastan's personal space.

\- You... dragon dung!

Leen yawned, as she was bored and unimpressed, but did not think that saying so out loud would prove a good idea. The strap of the bag slided off her shoulder. And, as she pulled it up, she saw Severus Snape, standing in the hallway, looking in their direction. He seemed confused.

The elder Lestrange put his hands on the wall, just over Leen, as if cutting her way to retreat. Talking, complaining and threatening.

Severus was not of a high opinion about Rabastan, and it would seem possible that the later was hurting Leen. He also did not know much about Leen, and thus did not reserve the right to intervene. So, he stood just outside the Transfiguration classroom, in a dangerous proximity from James Potter and Peter Pettigrew, folding over the Potions paper and thinking.

\- What's wrong, Snivellus? - asked James, approaching him from the left. - Can't take care of your girlfriend?

Having spent another evening in the library studying together, Leen and Severus had granted the Marauders all the reasons they needed to consider them a couple. Additionally, since the Marauders have been considering both of them weird creations meant to be mocked for quiet some time already, neither of them have missed an opportunity to say something on the matter.

\- I don't have a girlfriend, Potter, - Snape exhaled, walking towards Leen and away from James. - Your standards of a relationship are unsurprisingly low.

Potter, rejoining his friends, chose to drag Peter and himself away, passing on this one. He did not quiet understand the reply Snivellus threw at him so carelessly, but he could sense there was something right in there, bothering him. He shared way more than a few conversations over a heavy oak library table with Lily Evans, yet there was no meaningful way anyone would label her his girlfriend, as much as he would love that. There was also no satisfactory explanation as why he thought a few conversations over a library table would suffice to label others a couple, which, of course, was not going to have an affect on him continuing to do so in one single bit.

Severus smiled shortly, content with the made choice. It felt like he knew enough about Leen to trust her, to assume that she needed and could be provided with his support. Reaching her and Rabastan, he stopped, waiting for an appropriate moment in their conversation to interrupt and suggest Leen to work on the Potions paper.

\- Well, - he heard Leen saying in the middle of a sentence, - that?

She was speaking with a demonstrative pretension of not knowing what Rabastan was talking about until he explicitly mentioned it, enjoying every second of it.

\- If you want me doing your homework for you, you really should do better than Narcissa.

Severus did not know what the second clause meant. It seemed to hit Rabastan deeply and painfully, making him to slap the wall, yet failing to scare Leen. She knew Rabastan was more than skilled enough to harm her, and she knew he was not decisive enough to do so on his own. She was nevertheless leading a risky gamble, playing on the gentle strings of her cousin's soul, while he was angry and disappointed.

\- Malfoy would do, I think, - Leen whispered.

Snape thought he must say something to defend his friend, although there was no certainty about Lucius being offended, except, perhaps, being compared to Narcissa Black and apparently being declared a better option. What Leen did was to call her cousin a weak coward, and do so convincingly and constructively, alluding to actual examples.

\- Or Avery. - Leen's eyes shined with hatred upon mentioning Snape's other friend, responsible for her deeply rooted fear of flight. - Maybe even Snape, huh?

Leen put her open palm on Rabastan's chest, pushing him away and taking couple of steps towards Severus. The elder Lestrange inhaled slowly, painfully, unsure whether this meant that he, as a wizard with self-respect and decency, should not refer to the help Lucius and Avery could provide him with in his future educational endeavours from this point on. Guessing that that would be exactly what Leen wants, he decided that he should and will.

\- Bloody Gorgona, - said Rabastan powerlessly, taking a few steps back, as the force Leen exerted on him was enough to provide his mass with some acceleration. He only now noticed Severus, and gave him a lost, shy smile. He felt embarrassed and humiliated, letting his friend to witness his failure.

Leen, ignoring the remark and assuming that Snape did not come here for her, passed by him, with an intention to go to the Astronomy Tower, try to study and be worried about Malfoy, Avery or some other comparatively powerful Slytherin students paying her a visit at some point in the near future. She was nevertheless happy she could spit out the anger she had kept inside her for a long time.

At such moments of satisfaction and fear, on the back of her mind Leen always imagined her father standing at the corner, leaning to the wall, observing her and being disappointed. Euan was never cruel on purpose.

\- Lestrange, - called Severus, turning his back to Rabastan, pretending he never saw anything the later wouldn't want him to, and, as Leen kept walking, specified rapidly. - Leen. - She stopped. - I thought we could work on the paper.

\- We could, - she agreed reluctantly.

Snape caught up with her. He had his doubts about having made this choice. Rabastan was a more permanent and important part of his life. They shared a room and often ended up around the same people, such as Malfoy or Avery. However, it felt that he would regret letting Leen slip away and never become a permanent part of his life.

He followed Leen silently to the Astronomy Tower, where she had a corner behind the old telescopes only she knew about, a piece of wood stolen from Hagrid last year, a thick, giant, colorful towel and her own doubts about sharing it with Severus Snape. Seeing how he was hardly tailing along, falling behind, Leen made up her mind against it.

She sat on the floor, beside the window. Severus came in and sat next to her, far enough as not to touch. The floor was cold and sitting on it was not exactly healthy. It has only now occurred to him that neither Leen nor Rabastan have asked for his participation in their family skirmish, and that Leen might have been looking for some time alone.

\- Your father, - said Leen quietly, looking down. - Do you hate him?

Snape looked up to her, deciding how to feel about the question he did not expect to be asked.

\- I hate Rabastan, - said Leen before he could come up with the decision. - I hate his idiot brother, I hate my uncle and my granduncle, I hate my mother, I hate my grandfather, - she listed firmly, not betraying any of the emotions she might have been feeling. - All the time.

\- I hate my father from times to times, - said Severus. He sounded rather sad. - Not all the time.

\- Does that make you a bad person?

Snape did not know the answer and did not know what to say instead of an answer. There was another short, awkward silence. Leen jumped up on her feet, angry on herself for opening up so spontaneously to a person she barely knew and did not trust. 

She trusted the old guy from Talgarth who fought in the Second World War the moment she met him, on a subconscious level, as a person who told her about his town, bought her a cup of hot, mint tea with lemon and three sugar cubes in exchange for her company, wished her good luck on the fourth day of her journey and as a person she was never to see again. Snape was her classmate, a person she was to meet on daily basis for at least next five years, and she has just empowered him with a knowledge about herself, her thoughts and fears.

Leen had a deep breath and started walking away. Severus made another choice he was going to doubt.

\- Would you like to tell me what happened now? - he asked.

\- The bloody idiot wanted me to do his homework for him, - she informed. - I didn’t.

\- I get that, - Severus ran a hand through his hair, leaning to the wall. He was mostly confused about her mentioning Lucius. - What was about Avery?

\- There are multiple things about Avery. - cut Leen. She felt weak, as she realized she wanted Severus to listen to her and she wanted to complain about people that hurt her. She wanted him to feel sorry for her. - It would take a while.

Lucius has only recently introduced Snape to the circle of his friends and future colleagues, including Alfred Avery, most of whom if did not scare Lily Evans, certainly did not hold her approval. Severus enjoyed their company. Enjoyed the uncompromising manner in which they communicated their ideas. Enjoyed the power that came to them so naturally. Their decisiveness and intent to act unstoppably.

\- Well, - Severus slided down the cold floor, getting more comfortable, - could you spare the first thing about Avery?

Genuinely grateful for becoming a part of what Sirius Black would soon start calling the Slytherin gang and already knowing what Lily would say if she found out about it, Severus still wanted to know why Leen seemed to hate Lucius and Avery.

\- We had a broom racing in January of our first year, if you remember, and I happened to win, - Leen started. She dropped on the floor.

\- You were very good, - said Snape, remembering. Leen was ahead of her closest competitor, Rabastan Lestrange, by a steady three yards for the last two cycles.

\- It was not fair, to be honest, - said Leen. - I have been riding on a broomstick for as long as I can remember myself, and I was competing with muggleborns who never flew in their lives before coming to Hogwarts. - Leen did have problems with accepting her success. - Or gentle pureblood asses that also never went low enough to get on a broomstick.

Severus never knew that there were pureblood asses not thinking highly of a broomstick as a means of transportation.

\- You still bit the purebloods who wouldn’t shut up about Quidditch, - he said.

Leen looked to him. It must have been a pleasant moment in Snape’s life when she kicked James Potter to the ranks of the third fastest and a Hufflepuff enthusiast, now the team’s keeper, to the fourth best.

\- After the race I proposed that Rabastan’s broomstick was enchanted to go fast and madam Hooch happened to believe me.

Severus hummed a confirmation. Madam Hooch did not happen to believe her. She checked the broomstick in question and discovered that it was indeed enchanted to go faster. That was a less pleasant moment in his life, when Potter got promoted to the second best, and Sirius Black replaced the Hufflepuff enthusiast as the fourth.

\- That day at dinner Avery set next to me, at the Gryffindor table, - Leen inhaled loudly, trying to calm down. - That should have been the first clue the bastard was not up to good, huh? 

\- You never came to the Flying class after that race, - Snape straightened up, turning to Leen. She nodded.

\- I faked a letter from my mother, asking to excuse me from the classes. Madam Hooch happened to believe that, too. My mother has a very easy signature to forge. - Leen stopped for a second, stretching along the floor. - I really shouldn’t be telling any of this to you, Snape.

\- And yet you are, Lestrange, - observed Severus, lying back. It appeared that he covered Leen’s short, dark hair with his. - Being stupid seems to be a Gryffindor thing.

Leen smiled. She had an urge to hit him in a friendly way, substituting for her lack of arguments against most Gryffindor students being stupid. Instead, she continued.

\- Avery offered his compliments and a ride with him, right then, - Leen’s smile quickly faded. - I was planning to try for beater the following year, and he was on Slytherin’s team, - she explained, as if defending herself. - He gave me an enchanted broomstick, too. Of course, I was too stupid to notice that before it was fatally obvious.

That sounded consistent with the things Avery often said he’d be thrilled to do to muggles or muggle-borns.

\- He had me fly all the way to Hogsmeade and back, - Leen hit the wall as she realised her left hand was mildly shaking, - on a broomstick kicking me off itself.

\- You cannot ride anymore, - Snape said after a moment’s thought.

He longed his hand to Leen, unsure what to do. Severus was feeling sorry for her. He did not know whether it constituted stupidity or strength on her part to fabricate a letter to cover up the person that might have scarred her for the rest of her life, but he was feeling sorry for her.

\- Have you told anyone?

Leen shook her head. Snape’s fingers landed on her shoulder, hardly touching, stretching uncomfortably to manage that. Leen closed her eyes. 

\- You know, Snape, - she spared the last piece of the confession for the day. - I am both afraid that my father finds out, and it hurts me that he cannot see beyond my lies.


	10. The Unrevealing

\- You are an inconsistent idiot, Lestrange, - declared Severus confidently, standing up. Leen jumped up on her feet easily and effortlessly, debating whether she should give a hand to help Snape up.

\- Well, you are in Slytherin, - she said, watching him struggle.

\- Your entire family is in Slytherin, - answered Snape with forgiveness, finally getting up and picking his bag from the floor.

\- Exactly why being in Slytherin sucks, - Leen smiled back.

Both Leen and Severus had unsure, weak smiles, as if they were just learning how to.

\- Just for the record, - said Snape, feeling an obligation to be honest, - I don’t… hate Avery. - he realised it came out rather childish. - Or Rabastan. He used the help he could get, and I don't think it is condemnable. In principle.

Severus never really got the chance to read any of the works of the renowned muggle Friedrich Nietzsche. In fact, he hasn't ever heard of him. Nevertheless their opinions about morality happened to coincide in some major aspects. They both didn't think there was something important or inherently good about morality as the muggle or the wizarding world have pictured it for the last centuries.

Snape has always independently subscribed to the theory that the weak and the failure are meant to perish. He did feel sad for Leen having to live with a fear of something she seemed to be good at. However, he also felt that by making the choice of not seeking protection, she has voluntarily signed up for the consequences. He did not think that Avery has done something wrong by exercising his power over a weaker wizard, likely for no other reason than his personal amusement.

\- Especially if he is a bloody coward, - strained Leen. At first she was angry. She wanted to hit Severus, this time as if she meant it. In a second she took the wisdom he formed with a genuine belief, although vaguely, into account. Consequently she felt empty, losing the willingness to hit Severus as if she meant it.

\- Yes, - he agreed easily and calmly. - Especially if the person is a coward. - Snape walked towards the arc, leading to the spiral staircase, which, in its turn, led to one of the corridors of the castle. - I propose we go to the library and write a paper I won’t be embarrassed to put my name on.

Leen silently followed him, letting an unformed thought, completely unknown to her before, spin over her mind furiously. She could not recall an instance of her opening up so fundamentally to someone other than her father. She has given up an important part of herself, the belief that she was strong enough to contain her problems and not reveal them upon a simple inquiry.

\- If you tell anything to anyone, - she said just audible enough, - I will break your abnormally large nose, Snape.

\- That’s the spirit, Leen, - said Severus with a smirk. He realised he has called her by the first name only after he heard himself doing so. And he has enjoyed her caring enough to threaten him with something she definitely could have carried out, but absolutely was not going to, which was a slightly more surprising realisation than the first one.

As Lestrange walked down the spiral staircase, filled with an odd, disarming trust towards a person she was gradually discovering and unraveling to him her own self, her fate of a night of the following spring was being constructed.

\- Belt up, - she demanded with annoyance.

One could successfully argue that her fate of the aforementioned night was in fact decided eight years ago, under a full moon, by a vengeful adult werewolf deeply offended by a comment about his kind. One could engage in an infinite regression of causes.

Regardless of their true origins, events were taking place in all the points of the four dimensional world. Near the same point in time, and not very far away from the point in space occupied by Leen and Severus, James Potter and Peter Pettigrew approached their friends that have been waiting for them for less than five minutes.

Sirius Black was lying on the grass of unusually bright green color, looking at the clean, beautiful sky. He has recently developed a distracting habit of watching the clouds and recognising shapes. Remus Lupin was leaning to the wall of Astronomy Tower, nervously sipping from a handmade clay mug, filled with pumpkin juice. He did not recall being this scared ever before in his yet short, but objectively complicated life. Not even when he was a ten year old werewolf, listening to his parents conversing with Albus Dumbledore, discussing the possibility of his attending the school. He didn't want that to happen at the time. He was now glad it did.

\- Snivellus is such a pathetic guy, - declared James, dropping right on Sirius.

\- Mate! - exclaimed Black protestingly. Feeling his best friend's weight on his rather soft, weak stomach was not as painful or uncomfortable, as it was debasing. He put his hands on Potter's back trying to push him away, but James was confidently holding his position with a satisfied grin.

\- Snivellus is very smart, - said Remus thoughtfully, carefully putting his mug on the grass, next to the backpack and straightening up.

\- Come on, Remus, - panted Sirius, moving under James as aggressively as he could. - Snivellus is as stupid as it gets, - he gave another desperate strike to James. - Even more stupid than this sack of potatoes I cannot get off myself.

\- He does study hard, - said Peter, taking a sit next to Remus and looking at him as a worried younger brother. He was the only one to notice his anxiety, but did not know what to do about it.

\- One has to compensate for being such a hopeless idiot, - James landed a punch at the chest he was sitting on. Sirius howled in his helplessness, stretching his hands across the green grass and accepting his defeat.

\- Why are we talking about Snivellus? - quietly asked Pettigrew, assuming the question might give Remus a chance to speak up about whatever was keeping him so worried.

Lupin has made a choice. He has been in the agonising process of making the choice for every minute of the two years he had known Sirius, James and Peter. Each time it seemed to him that he had finally came up with a decision, he could not bring himself to act accordingly.

\- So, - he said slowly, making the word last longer than needed.

\- You saw how he stood there watching Rabastan shout on his girlfriend, - James answered Peter's question, ignoring Remus. - That was pathetic.

\- It was, - Peter smiled, as if apologising, although he did not agree with Potter. He thought peacefully walking away from the pathetic guy after a sharp reply was more lame than attentively observing what they all considered the pathetic guy’s pathetic girlfriend, respectfully waiting for her to choose whether she wanted his interference or not.

As James smiled back to Peter, Sirius made use of his distraction and pulled himself up, shaking his balance. Potter slided off with a surprised exclamation, but quickly got himself together and attacked Sirius back. Black, now prepared for one, had him on his back before he could do anything.

Remus sat down on the ground, took his almost empty mug and had a sip, observing James and Sirius loudly laugh and fight each other, rolling all over the place. The decisiveness he has been building up from early morning was collapsing. He had a sigh, longed the cup to Peter, as if he had just said a toast for his health and drank it up.

Pettigrew felt frustrated, as he was also observing James and Sirius behave like selfish children, while Remus was clearly having hard time.

\- People, - he said, thinking that he was shouting.

There was no response. Sirius and James were still knocking each other to the ground with an interchanging success, paying no attention to either Peter or Remus.

\- People, - repeated Pettigrew, now loud enough for James to turn his head to him and question what was up. He did not sound very happy about being interrupted and did seem to have some trouble holding his position on top of Sirius, but he did not sound angry either. - Get yourselves over here, - asked Peter.

It has occurred to him that he could not have been sure whether he did Remus a favor or not. Peter looked at him with caution, almost apologising. Lupin pretended to sip from his empty cup again, giving himself the time to think how exactly to proceed, while James drugged loudly protesting Sirius, just like he would a sack of potatoes.

\- So, - said Remus, holding the mug tightly, - I gave this a lot of thought, and…

\- Of course, - interrupted James, releasing the collar of Black’s shirt, - you always give everything a lot of thought.

\- Arse, - squeezed Sirius through his teeth, taking a sit next to him.

\- I do, don’t I? - Remus laughed shortly and nervously, putting the cup on the grass and simply trampling his hands. He was shaking. Details that James has failed to notice.

\- Yeah, - he said in the same joyful, careless manner, lying back on the grass. He looked in his best friend's direction, smiling openly and with a challenge. - Don’t you even think about…

\- Shut up, - cut Black firmly. He was slightly more observant than Potter. He could see now that Lupin was about to say something that was of high importance to him. - What have you given a lot of thought, Remus?

Sirius had an uncommon, oddly comforting manner of speaking, that betrayed him being uncompromising, demanding his answers no matter what and promising an unconditional support at the same time. Peter looked at him with relief and gratitude, as the responsibility for Lupin has been lifted from him.

\- Well, - Remus looked straight up to Sirius, thinking that it would be easier to tell it to him, than to Peter or James. - I am a... - he stopped, remembering that he has not picked up the articulation of the information he was going to convey yet.

\- Yes? - gently pushed Sirius, looking back at him.

\- I have lycanthropy. - said Lupin, presenting his condition as a disease, as opposed to an amazing ability of turning into a wolf once a month.

\- You are a werewolf, - calmly said James after a few moments of awkward silence, as if there was a need of clarification. Lupin nodded, looking very attentively on the faces of his friends, waiting for their reaction.

\- Shut up, - repeated Sirius, resuming the tension James blew away with his intelligent observation. Sirius has been suspecting that Lupin was a special case for about half a year by now. He has been hoping Remus will trust him enough to tell that himself, yet he had no idea what he was going to say in response.

\- What’s the matter with you? - Potter straightened up, throwing a handful of stones, grass and soil on Sirius. He did have a feeling this was not supposed to be about him. Faintly, in the very back of his mind. Sirius ignored him, looking attentively in Lupin’s direction, right above his shoulder.

\- What about your transformations? - asked Peter. Remus looked at him, questioningly raising his eyebrow. Lycanthropy was essentially the transformations with some side effects, and the inquiry at first did not make any sense. - How come no one ever noticed? - clarified Peter.

\- I am taken to Shrieking Shack every full moon, - answered Remus. He did not have the right or the authority to disclose that technical detail to anyone at all. - Through the Whomping Willow. - he continued with full knowledge of having committed a violation of an important school rule, made very specially for him.

\- You mean they lock you up in there? - asked James, finally kicking into the conversation.

\- Well, - said Remus slowly, who has never thought of the arrangement as locking him up. - Yes.

\- What does a werewolf do in a shack? - James threw in another question for discussion after another short, awkward silence, heavy with Sirius still trying to think of what to say. He had a sigh, grabbed Lupin’s left hand and rolled up the sleeves of his robes and shirt up at once, before Remus could do anything to stop him.

\- Here, - exhaled Black, displaying deep, large scars of cuts and bites, of different colors, shapes and depth on Lupin’s forearm. A complicated, painful looking web of scars, hardly leaving any of his pale skin visible. - This is what a werewolf does in a shack.

Remus pulled his hand back, rolling the sleeves down. This was not the direction he was intending for this conversation to take. He was as worried and scared as before, still not having had heard anything about what his friends thought regarding his lycanthropy.

\- I saw you coming out the shower once, - explained Sirius. - Five in the morning, - he added, as if complaining. Lupin shrugged. He was careful not to expose his tormented flesh to anyone that was not madam Pomfrey.

\- We should do something, - said Pettigrew with a determination unusual for him. He could almost physically feel the pain in his own arm and that made him feel responsible for his friend again.

\- The most brilliant thought you had all day, Peter, - teased James, who although seemed to have had joined the talk, was not handling the seriousness of what Remus has revealed too well.

\- I mean it, James, - pushed Peter, turning his sight to Potter. - We should…

Remus smiled at him, silently and politely asking to shut up. Pettigrew did.

\- How do you do at home? - asked Sirius. He sounded genuinely concerned and interested.

\- We have a large garden, - said Lupin quietly, anxiously waiting for an actual reaction to his condition. - I am silenced and allowed to run around.

\- We’ll do that, - decided James. - We’ll get you a garden or something.

\- Guys, - said Remus louder than he had anticipated, exhausted from what he considered to be pointless inquiries and promises. His hands were shaking and he was absolutely in no position to help it. His voice sounded foreign, sharp and unnatural. The guys turned towards him, worried and nervous themselves. - Now that you know, - he took a deep, long breath, approaching the hardest part of the confession, - I would understand it if you decide to…

\- Cut the rubbish, Moony, - interrupted Sirius before Lupin could come up with an appropriate verb, and barked, releasing the tension for good.

\- What? - Remus still could not recognise his voice. Black grabbed his scarred arm again and drugged him over, laughing and feeling relieved himself. That was it. There was nothing to say about Remus being a werewolf, as that did not change a single thing about Remus or their friendship.

\- Moony, - repeated James, as if flavoring the word. - I like it.

\- Nothing is going to change, Remus, - promised Black with a reassuring smile, lying back in the grass and making him fall with him. Lupin laughed, loudly exhaling the fear he has been holding.

\- Except for how we are going to call you from now on, - James wayed in, thinking whether to take the opportunity of climbing up on Sirius or not. - What was that about doing something, Peter?

Pettigrew, the last person still sitting and watching over his lying friends from above, grinned as the evil mastermind of the genius plan he happened to be at the moment.

* * *

Considering the time of the year, the wind, throwing the leaves and dust into a twisting dance on the other side of the window, was probably cold, strong and howling. The charms accurately framing Three Broomsticks, however, were successfully preventing the exchange of matter waves, making it quiet and warm for all the customers, regardless of the weather outside.

Severus had a short, disappointed sigh before putting the Arithmancy textbook down on the table and watching Lucius, occupying the chair opposite to him, raise his hand to call the waiter and get more rum. Malfoy naturally felt entitled to the service he was being provided with from complete strangers, giving orders as if he owned the place, and that was one of the many things that attracted Snape to his company.

\- How do you like the beverage? - asked Evan Rosier, nodding at the still full glass of butterbeer in front of Severus. - Cub.

Snape smiled apologetically, regretfully stopping himself from voicing a reply he had in mind. It was not exactly easy to be one of them. It came with doubting and thoroughly questioning every sentence before saying it out loud, thinking about every action after he had committed it, noticing and remembering all the glances frowned in his direction. It was hard, exhausting and ultimately rewarding.

He took the glass and raised it to the level of his eyes, looking at refracted Lucius through the liquid, hesitant about drinking it. Rosier smirked loudly, emptied his own glass of firewhiskey and gestured the scared boy serving rum to refill.

\- Have you had beer before? - asked Malfoy, trying to hide a slightly judgemental smile.

Severus shook his head, put the glass back on table and opened the textbook. It was oddly comforting to read through the passages he had been working on with Leen earlier that day and try his best to avoid the conversation.

\- Come, - he heard Evan saying to Violetta Carrow, a concerningly thin teenager with large, expressive green eyes, sitting next to him. Rosier talked in an imperative manner, so Violetta obediently stood up and moved around the table to approach him. 

Evan took her wrist and drugged her over, touching in a very unpleasant way. Violetta said something incomprehensible, squinting her eyes through the kiss and forcing a smile afterwards. Severus observed her with attention, analysing the scared, unconfident fight of a drowning deadman she was pretending to put up, as Rosier played with the strap of her underwear.

Violetta Carrow was to be drugged into the Death Eaters if she did not have the courage to end her inconsistent relationship with Evan Rosier or if the latter did not get tired of her before they graduated. The conclusion Snape reached was that at least the first condition was met and Carrow was safely on her way to greatness.

\- Cub, - repeated Evan, looking at Snape over Violetta’s shoulder. - What is your deal with the Lestrange girl?

Severus had a sip of butterbeer, using the time to process the implications of the question. Evan watched him with a disapproval. Just as most of the other young Dark Arts enthusiasts Severus ended up being around due to more than one circumstance, Rosier often felt that Snape did not belong in their company. Thus, each time Snape was a little more hesitant, a little less grateful for his position in their circle of the elected they imagined him to be, they disapproved of his actions and of him as a whole as demonstratively as they saw fit.

\- She is a mess, - Severus said calmly, disliking the taste of butterbeer.

He believed that was the statement Rosier was expecting to hear, and insulting Leen in front of other people did not feel wrong. Right now Leen was a distant concept of friendship he had no trouble stepping on. Which felt oddly empowering.

\- The Lestrange girl works well under pressure. - Lucius exchanged a quick, understanding smile with Rosier.

The memories that the statement provoked made Evan laugh. To him Leen Lestrange was an even more distant concept of a stupid little girl, strong enough to entertain him with a desperate, hopeless struggle every time he felt like lecturing or hurting her. His voice grew louder, attracting attention, until Carrow silenced him with a kiss.

The peace Severus had effortlessly made with his conclusion about the inevitable future for Violetta suddenly slipped away. Watching her thin, fragile body, shake from fear and uncertainty in Evan’s pale arms triggered his empathy. 

\- Don’t waste your time on her, - advised Lucius, slowly, tastefully sipping his rum. - Severus.

The instant Snape looked away from Rosier and to the Malfoy, he caught himself thinking that punching the former would feel good. A wild, primitive thought of the satisfaction of non-magical violence that would not normally occur to him rang with an echo of the girl in discussion.

\- Why would I? - he asked with a faint smile. 

Lucius smiled back, believing that the inquiry was rhetoric, stretched across the table to take the cup of beer and finished at once, as if it was just water.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let me know what you think in the comments ^^


	11. The Winter

Three months and two weeks ago, the instance Leen walked into the Telescope Room with Severus Snape, a decision she has been regretting on multiple levels and praising only on one, and even that rather subconsciously, the corner behind the old telescopes stopped being the place where she would find peace seeking refuge from her beloved extended family or the Marauders. Something felt different about the space from that point on. It felt stained, invaded, occupied.

\- Good evening, - greeted Snape, throwing a roll of parchment on Leen. He had perfected the skill of throwing things on her while she was on a height less than or equal to four yards.

Lestrange stretched her hand, caught it and put next to herself on the windowsill, with the hesitation of a person who knew the content and was planning to postpone its revelation for as long as they could. A thin pale snake twisted around the roll, holding it as a ribbon, confirmed the guess. The parchment was her written exam for Potions she failed to pick up from the office, and, as he had threatened many times, Severus abused Professor Slughorn’s weakness towards exceptionally gifted students to do so instead of Leen.

\- Lucius was marking, - he informed, taking his sit on the floor, next to Leen’s bag.

\- I am screwed then, - concluded Leen, pushing the needle through the thick fabric of her robe to connect the uneven edges of a cut around the elbow, giving to that all the concentration she could master, as the thought of having to see her exam, assessed by a person she had no respect for, was draining.

\- Indeed, - agreed Severus with a sigh, unwilling to argue. Lucius was a fair grader, generous whenever it was possible. - Open.

Leen put her robes aside. She squeezed the head of the snake in between her two fingers, holding until it stopped moving and turned into white ink, leaking to the floor, letting the parchment to unroll.

\- Average, - read Leen, relieved. She dropped her robes from the sill and jumped down herself, always happy to demonstrate Severus her ability to get off twice her own heights without any visible effort.

\- Failure, - commented Severus, longing Leen a slice of dried orange dipped in sugar. - The train for London is leaving in two hours.

Leen hummed an acknowledgement of her awareness of the fact, taking a sit next to Snape. She grabbed the orange slice in between her teeth, getting back to sewing up the robe. Severus, already used to Leen often behaving in a rather unexpected manner, did not react to that, silently took an old newspaper folded as a bag out of his pocket, full with dried fruits from the lunch, and put it next to Leen, as he assumed she must be hungry.

\- Lily said you haven’t packed yet.

Leen, on her part, was already used to Severus often mentioning her roommate, as well as his other friends. She threw a slice of apple into her mouth, putting in certain effort to ignore Evans talking about her in her absence and the irritation she felt upon this particular instance. Before coming up with a reply that would be both inoffensive and accurate, Leen twisted the string around her finger and pulled it to cut. It hurt, but it was also pleasant to discover that she had the strength in her thin, long fingers to do so.

\- We have a different understanding of packing, - she said, turning her robes over and looking for other damages. Lestrange had all the belongings she was intending to take with her shoved into her camping backpack and the rest in her wardrobe, which although was looking like it was going to explode any given minute, was successfully locked and that was good enough for her.

\- Fair, - Severus shrugged. - What exactly do you think you are doing? - he questioned with a little judgement, watching Leen to stick the needle into her bag, finally attempting to attach the zipper, hanging uselessly for the last three months.

\- Pretending that I give a crap, - she said, imagining the talk she was going to be given by her orderly mother and, after a short consideration, by her father as well. Neither of them were going to appreciate either her carelessness or her demonstrative patching, and while she could not care any less about Jane getting mad, she did feel sad and guilty about giving Euan a fine reason to lecture her.

\- Give it here, - demanded Severus, unable to bear the sight of Leen ruining her dark gray bag with an inappropriately visible yellow thread. - You always can rip it off and get back to your rudimentary and actually non-existing cloth fixing muggle skills, - he suggested, seeing Leen’s hesitation.

She handed over her bag to Severus, sliding off the floor and putting her hands under her head, getting comfortable. Her hair, now long enough to be tied up in a short braid, touched Snape's leg.

\- Reparo, - he whispered, conjuring some fabric out of thin air and effortlessly fixing the bag. Something he could have done long ago, if Leen had asked for or it seemed to have been something she needed. Dropping the bag on her face, Snape took a few cherries from what was meant to be Leen's lunch, breakfast and dinner.

The fragile connection established between two insecure, socially inept teenagers, fueled by their respective incompetence in Potions and Astronomy, was a rather improbable one. And that was perhaps a major reason to the connection being established and valued. Despite all the doubts and fears that wrapped them up as they shared the most protected components of their stories, at first rather unintended, their interactions were light. And it did not feel as if there was an obligation of any sort associated with their friendship.

Theirs was a mutually caring, yet not an exhausting relationship. Severus was rather fond of her hateful, strangely accepting attitude towards her own family and most of his friends. Unlike Evans, Leen was not imposing her opinions about them on him. She was someone he could spend time with, share dried fruits or chocolate, discuss classes and do not feel rejected or failing, as it was the case with Lily.

\- You said your father did not like wizards. - Leen reminded suddenly, lifting the bag. One quality that Severus did not exactly adore in her was that of throwing questions on him without any warning.

\- I did, - he confirmed coldly.

\- Do you think it would help if he met more wizards?

Snape gave her an impolitely obvious assessing look.

\- It could go either way, - he said, smiling. The thought of having his father in the same room with Leen Lestrange turned out to be entertaining. - Would you like to visit my muggle house during the break?

Leen had a sigh, not entirely sure in the answer she was going to give.

\- Hell, - she said, enjoying one of the last swear words of the year she was pronouncing, before Euan was there to watch her language. With the calmth and politeness of a civilized adult he claims to be, but in no way open to a negotiation. - I would get you damn Christmas gifts.

Severus smiled, longing his hand in Leen's direction without any explicit purpose. His finger hit Leen’s shoulder. The thick fabric of the sweater covering Leen’s shoulder. She took a deep breath, composing her courage, and catched Snape’s hand by wrist, pulling him over. As he fell, Lestrange couldn’t help but to stretch her arms in a hug. Carefully and gently, with a complete lack of confidence, expressing the anxiety building up in her for a few weeks already.

She did not want to go home, and that was a feeling that Severus could identify and relate to very well. He put his hands over her back, enveloping her.

\- Alright then.

* * *

It was around sixty hours later that Leen found herself sliding a hunting knife through fresh snow until it cracked the layer of ice beneath, hit the frozen soil and would not slide any further. She pushed the knife from side to side, to make sure that it was safely in, squeezed the handle tighter and pulled herself up, putting her left foot on a tree root that happened to grow just far enough for her to reach. Lestrange silently cursed as her right leg stretched with a sudden, short pulse of pain. She was out of breath, exhausted and filled with the most euphoric sensation of freedom.

Euan, who unlike Leen did not deny himself the convenience of magic and was in a better physical shape, was just ahead of her, conquering the obstacles of almost perfectly vertical climb faster and with an effortless grace.

Leen bit on her lip, flavoring the tension in her arms and hands, as she forced the knife into a crack and made another step forward. She was expecting to meet with her most favorite muggle in around half an hour before continuing to the final, presumably three hour long hike to the peak. 

The snow was yesterday. Today was the sun, unexpectedly bright and warm for December. Muggle Theodore Thompson stood in around half an hour’s distance from the Lestranges, beside the tent he set up last night, looking at the horizon, where the edge of ice covered rocks met the sky. He had a sip of hot ginger tea from the traveling mug whose metallic surface reflected the rays of the rising sun, threatening to temporarily blinden any person looking at it.

Ted, who had once spent two months riding a bus all around England with a group of constantly high on experimental drugs artists, was observing the most peculiar man he had ever seen. He could not quiet put his finger on what precisely was strange about him, but, after having worked with Euan for so many years, he had developed a gut feeling for the same type of slippery, nameless insanity as that of Euan. And the man, comfortably standing knee deep in snow with nothing but shorts and a pair of running shoes definitely had more of it.

The man had set up his own tent closer to the trees, sometime before Ted’s arrival. He presented himself as Alphard Black, which Ted assumed to be a mispronunciation of Alfred Black, promised that Euan Lestrange had invited him to join, owned a suspiciously old polaroid and at least six different photo cameras. He was particularly proud of the one he had smuggled out from the other side of the Iron Curtain the previous year. Brand new Kiev-5, shining in its expensive leather case.

\- Sir, - called Ted, approaching him with a slight caution, - would you like some tea?

Alphard lowered the camera he was holding towards the sky, trying to catch a shot that would include both a cloud that reminded a giant elephant if looked at with enough imagination and a few tree branches covered in snow, and turned towards Ted with an open, grateful smile.

\- I would love that, - he said.

Ted smiled politely in response, longing the thermos to Black before he remembered that he was planning on pouring some into the cup instead of exposing himself and his favorite mug to all the possible viruses and germs that could come with unknown photographers.

\- Euan shall be here soon, - went on Alphard, drinking more than the half of the remaining tea. He would prefer for it to have more sugar, but he liked the taste of ginger.

It was quiet unsettling for Ted to hear someone call his professor by his first name. It took him a second or two to understand who they were talking about.

\- That was the plan, - he nodded, accepting his mug and rolling the cup back on it.

Ted turned back to the horizon, looking intently at a narrow flat space between two relatively small rocks, expecting to see Euan or Leen any moment. He would not admit it if asked, but Ted was worried about them. The decision to cover most of the steep, slippery, objectively challenging road at night his teacher had made did not appear to him as a smart one.

\- Where is your boy? - he asked, distracting himself.

Theodore had significantly more trouble wrapping his mind around the fact that a twelve year old boy presented as Alphard Black’s cousin Regulus was also found at an altitude of a few miles than that of having encountered Alphard Black at all. First, he did not know which name could have been mispronounced or misheard as Regulus. Second, Ted was unaware of broomsticks as of means of transportation and thus could not comprehend how a slim, seemingly slow and disorganized young man like Regulus made it through the at least six hour long road.

\- Still sleeping, I would assume, - answered Alphard.

He was looking at Ted with an open, almost demonstrative interest as if he had found an unusual, highly intelligent animal. Ted, feeling that with his entire body, nervously drank the tea, desperately thinking of another question he could ask to direct the conversation and not get himself into some sort of a trouble or an embarrassment. Fortunately, a cheerful, usually rather loud and annoying voice cut through the fresh air to resolve the awkward tension.

\- Good morning!

Sophie MontGomery, a twenty three year old muggle pursuing a master’s degree in Comparative Literature at the university at which Euan taught and Ted attempted to expand the humanity’s knowledge of volcanic granites, walked out the tent she was sharing with the later. She was holding an old copy of a book with missing cover, with her finger stuck on the page she was reading. Her long, curly blond hair were fixed in a bun with a couple of ordinary pencils she would take out to make notes if needed, and she had on an unnaturally bright orange coat and yellow rain boots that made her look rather childish.

\- Sweet Potatoes! - exclaimed Sophie, approaching Ted and Alphard. - Sir, aren’t you cold? - she asked, slightly amazed.

Black turned to her, smiling even wider. Sophie was perhaps the most peculiar and the sweetest muggle he had ever encountered himself. The previous evening, just an hour after she arrived, Sophie told him contents of at least four fictional muggle books in the most passionate way, engaging him to the point where he felt interested in reading some muggle literature.

\- I suppose I am,- agreed Alphard calmly.

The charms he used to isolate his body from the hostile environment were working exactly as anticipated, successfully protecting him from the cold. However, as explaining that would either have been extremely challenging or involve violation of the International Statute of Secrecy, it seemed simpler to confirm the muggle point of view.

\- Sir, - started Sophie with a concern, grabbing the mug from Ted's hands, - you should...

\- There! - interrupted Ted with an excitement, peacefully letting go of his tea, as he finally saw Leen's face rise from behind a rock. He decisively cut through the snow, reaching her in a few large steps, while Leen threw herself over the last obstacle and landed on a safer, horizontal ground without any visible effort.

\- Outstanding, - assessed Sophie, impressed by the fairly complicated technique she would not expect a thirteen year old to demonstrate so well. - Mr. Black, - she turned back to Alphard, only to discover that he was already wearing a pair of purple trousers from synthetic glowing material with a thick sweater and to loose the gift of speech.

Sophie blinked a few times, eliminating the possibility of a hallucination. She was not particularly good with calculations and estimations, but the seconds she looked away from the strange old man were most definitely not enough for him to change his clothes, let alone to get to his tent and get those.

\- Call me Alphard, dear, - he said gently, unsure why Sophie must look so confused.

She slowly nodded, still processing what had happened.

Alphard had ice blue, soft eyes, framed in kind of wrinkles that came from smiling too often. His calm, yet inappropriately curious expression was oddly reassuring, and in a moment Sophie found herself sighing with a relief. "Of course he had enough time to change" she thought. The most famous wizarding photographer of wild nature in Northern Europe in fact could afford way more interesting and weird stunts than that.

\- Now, walk me to my boy, - he asked, graciously taking Sophie’s hand and leading her towards his tent. After all, the reason he had drugged Regulus away from his arguably insane parents was not exactly providing him with an opportunity of sleeping through the spectacular sunrise and missing on a conversation with an objectively pleasant muggle. - And tell me more about that Frenchman… What was his name, again?

\- Camus, - said Sophie, recovering from the surprise and excited to tell more about the Frenchman. - I am reading one of his earlier works, - she paused for a second. - Alphard, - the name felt foreign and unusual, but MontGomery went on, expressing her fascination of the aforementioned works and their complicated relationship with Existentialism.

The light green, hand-made winter hat Ted had brought Leen from Peru, a country one would not usually expect to find winter hats in, has fallen into the hoodie of her coat, exposing her sweaty hair to the freezing wind. She was too consumed with having made it up faster than her father and with having met Ted to notice that or do something about it.

Muggle Theodore Thompson laughed, watching Leen almost slip and fall, and, as she jumped towards him, with a clear intention of shaking him out of balance, caught her in the air, not moving in one single bit to her disappointment.

\- Good morning to you, too, - said Ted forgivingly.

\- Mo, - she exhaled hardly audibly, - ing.

Euan, surely, but slowly carving his way through the snow, appreciating the picturesque landscape, smiled somewhat defeated as he had lost in their informal competition, despite him doing his genuine best. Ted waved him a silent greeting before pulling the hoodie over Leen's head.

Leen said something incomprehensible in protest, punching Ted as hard as she could. Theodore hit her forehead with a finger, as if protecting himself, and threw her up. Lestrange laughed, inhaling more of the freedom and happiness the wilderness and unusually strong muggle were granting her with.

\- It would take fifteen Leens to do me any harm, - he declared confidently, catching her just an inch away from the ground.

\- It would not, - contradicted Lestrange, hopelessly struggling to get away from Ted's firm grip.

\- And ten of them would have to be at least twice as strong, - continued Ted, losing the confidence, as Leen somehow managed to slide off, step on the ground and hit him with a handful of snow.

Thompson squatted down not to be so intimidatingly tall. He put his hands on Leen's shoulders, turned her around to face him and pulled down the scarf, covering her face, before Leen could throw at him more snow. There was a large bruise on her cheek, crimson in the center and blue at the edges. Fresh and painful.

\- What is that for? - asked Ted, almost instinctively putting his hand on it and trying to wipe it away.

\- A bad grade, - Leen said quietly, looking to a side. 

The choice of the words was conscious and deliberate, substituting for “a punishment”. While Jane has been precisely punishing her for the final Average at Potions, as well as for the attitude she believed her daughter had in excess, methodically hitting her over and over again in the exact same place, that was not a story Leen’d like to tell Ted.

\- Leen, - said Ted softly and, not knowing what else to do, pushed her at himself, hugging.

He had a very remote idea of what Euan's wife was like and, if he were a good Christian, he should have lighted a candle for that every single day. Capable witch that regarded muggle-protecting laws as a worthless nonsense, she would have most definitely terminated or permanently altered Ted’s life for worse if he ever had the misfortune of meeting her. Fortunately, all he ever learned about Jane Madalena was from a secondary source: she was an abusive parent, and her husband, an amazing father as far as Ted could judge, was tolerating that for some reason.

\- Don't worry, - he heard Leen whispering through a yawn. - It doesn't hurt anymore.

Ted nodded with a sigh. As Leen's considerably heavy bag, for the most part stuffed with the food supply, was sliding off her shoulders, he took it off and put on himself. Leen, in fact grateful for having lost the weight, tried to fight it back, punching and hitting Ted. Thompson laughed, answering just seriously enough as to teach her muggle combat he was pretty good at and not hurt in the process.

Sophie, waiting for Alphard to communicate with his cousin and watching Ted, discovered an irrational, inexplicable jealousy in herself. Ted Thompson was a person she could very clearly see herself getting married to. He had a wide chest and a neat white scar crossing his left eyebrow, marking a wound of an open tournament he won when he was nineteen. He was incredibly attractive in the huge, ancient sweater and the new jeans, and, while playing with the child, he was the happiest she had ever seen him to be.

Sophie had a sigh. She looked at the closed entrance of the tent and decided that sitting on the comfortable looking, but impractical in the given circumstances fluffy pink mat would not be the worst thing to do.

\- Fine!

The first thought that crossed Sophie’s mind and had her jump on her feet in terror was that the mat had spoken to her. The screaming frustrated voice, however, came from the general direction of the tent, and Sophie could have sworn that its source was at least a dozen yards away, strengthened by the echo of an empty corridor that could not exist.

\- I am coming, - it continued, approaching.

Sophie recognised the anger of a teenager that was woken up by a caring adult and did not want to participate in whatever useful activity they were being drugged to, be that a nutritious breakfast or a dancing class. She smiled, reminded of her younger sister.

\- MontGomery, - acknowledged Euan, casually taking over her sit and carefully placing his backpack on the ground. - Hello.

\- Professor Lestrange, - she nodded, walking to another, just as comfortable and impractical mat opposite to Euan and taking a sit. - Greetings!

Sophie opened the book with the missing cover, feeling a little awkward. She knew Euan well enough to be out of the questions that would start a basic conversation, but not as well as to go straight into discussing, for example, Camus and Sartre, a topic that was intriguing Sophie for as long as she could remember herself.

Lestrange looked away, making it easier for her to start and soon be consumed by the reading. Alphard Black, shining in ultimate personal fulfillment, came out the tent and dropped right on snow, next to Euan, holding a basket full of colorful cookies in his one hand and the polaroid in the other. Regulus Arcturus Black, carrying his broomstick as one would carry a weapon to a battlefield, followed him, being uninterested in the situation as demonstratively as it was possible.

He was confused, scared and excited to be in the real world, away from his parents, wishing on a subconscious level that Sirius was here to tease him. His presence was strangely reassuring and liberating at the same time. He would experience no difficulties in taking a step towards the muggle girl and asking her why she had pencils in her hair, drugging his younger brother along. 

\- Hundred Mandrakes! - Exclaimed Alphard, putting away the basket with sweets. - Is that Leen?

Euan silently nodded, watching him quickly adjust the settings on the polaroid. He was quite fond of Alphard Black. Old, infinitely kind and curious man he did not hate to spend time with, Alphard was perhaps the only pureblood friend Euan could claim. The difference in their age and occupations had made often interactions challenging, limiting them to the times when Black was looking for a new, interesting location to document and Lestrange was offering him to join an expedition or a hike.

\- She has grown up so much! - he observed, longing Euan a laminated piece of paper that his device had spitted out. - She seems very attached to that muggle, - he went on with a little judgement. - Doesn’t that concern you?

Alphard has never thought of non-wizards as of disgusting, contagious beings to be avoided at any cost, which had made him the least favorite child of his parents. He was in fact delighted to learn more about the muggle world at every chance he could get and was fascinated by muggle art and the photo cameras they invented despite being deprived of magic. Yet, a child of his parents, he believed in pureblood supremacy and found it odd when wizards allowed their children to get so closely involved with muggles.

\- Not at all, - said Euan, watching the black square fade into a beautiful, animated image of Leen and Ted. - I thought your brother would come, too, - he turned to Regulus, vaguely remembering Alphard mentioning Walburga's sons, in plural, partially in an attempt to engage the lonely looking child, partially in an attempt to change the subject.

\- No, sir. - answered Regulus, hating how his back straightened up and how he felt like getting away from all these new people, back to the familiar, safe environment of his parents’ intimidating presence, missing his elder brother on a more conscious level.

\- Wally hardly ever lets the poor lad to leave the house, - explained Alphard, gesturing Regulus to have a sit next to him and lovingly putting a hand over his shoulder. - Let alone with a crazy man like myself.

\- Uncle, - cut Regulus, - you are not crazy, - he added softer, carefully putting his Comet 2.0 on the ground and running a hand through his long, disorganized hair. - That one is, - he went on quietly, nodding at approaching Leen.

Euan smiled with the acceptance of the fact that from the point of view of a nervous young man exposed to the muggle world for the first time his daughter must certainly seem out of her right mind, just as Alphard is from that of Walburga’s. He put the animated photograph into the pocket of his overcoat, as there was no good reason to show it to Ted, in whose experience pictures moved only if flipped through fast enough and in no way due to using magical film.

Ted had allowed Leen to push him all the way to the rest of the campaign. Done with fighting, hungry and tired, she fell on him. Her forehead touched Ted’s stomach, as she pressed at him with the weight of her entire body, unable to stand on her own anymore and trying to catch her breath.

\- See? - Ted put his large palm on Leen’s head, stroking her hair. - One Leen is far from enough.

\- The student is only as good as the teacher, - she quoted weakly.

\- Did you hear that, Professor? - asked Ted, taking a sit next to Sophie and letting Leen fall on his lap. Sophie closed her book, intending to introduce herself to Leen.

Watching her yawn and curl up, as if Ted was the most comfortable armchair, with draining, hopeless sadness Euan thought that his daughter would have been happier living with Ted and a girl like MontGommery in a dormitory room with a shared bathroom. Otherwise he would have done something about her ignoring everyone, including himself, and falling asleep before Sophie could say a word. 

\- Your teacher is just fine. - Lestrange threw one of the marshmallow pumpkin cookies Alphard had contributed on Ted, which he successfully caught and had a bite. - It is hard to deny though that a little gratitude would make him more enthusiastic.

\- Here. - Ted, carefully holding Leen, stretched to take a beautiful, almost perfectly flat stone from the pocket of his jeans and throw it to Euan. - Fresh from Chile. You are welcome, Professor.

Lestrange was promised that particular solid aggregate since September. He turned it around, studying. It was about half an inch wide and three inches long, of an unusual lime color with white, distinct patterns. His fascination with geology started by collecting stones with some sort of recognisable images, more than two decades ago, and this one reminded a leaf of a peach tree.

\- This does the job, - Euan smiled, hiding it inside his backpack. - Regulus, isn’t it? - he asked, suddenly turning to Alphard and his cousin.

\- Yes, sir. - Black confirmed in a shaking voice, feeling like he was in trouble.

\- Do you like it here? - simply asked Euan.

It was strange for young Black to sense an interest in the question, as opposed to a mere politeness. Regulus had a deep sigh, squeezed the handle of his broomstick for moral support and gave an honest, affirmative answer. Being cut out from the civilization and observing a friendship of a muggle and a wizard was perhaps the most unusual thing that has ever happened to him. He imagined how outraged his father would be shall he ever find out that his son was spending time in the company of a blood traitor. It felt good.

\- So, what is your favorite subject at school? - asked Sophie, pausing for a second to prepare herself and not mess up the weird name. - Regulus.

\- Transfiguration, - he said, confusing the muggles, who were expecting to hear Chemistry or Music, or some other muggle word.

\- That sure sounds interesting, - said Sophie slowly. Regulus gave her an unsure smile and, as she did not stop him, went on telling that the goblet he conjured from a chicken at the final exam was completely featherless and leaving Sophie to hope that she had simply encountered a kid with an overwhelmingly vivid imagination.

Euan and Alphard sat back, literally and metaphorically, listening to the rest of the conversation as to a comedy on the radio, ready to step in the moment Regulus would get excited enough to actually demonstrate magic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~ Alphard Black was the uncle whose money Sirius inherited when he was 17/18  
> ~ I am returning to being a student and having part-time jobs next week, so there is no telling when I will be able to post the next chapter. I want to do the best work on it I can, so it might take a while ^^''  
> ~ Let me know what you think in the comments! (:


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